VAN  CLEVE 

MARY  S.  WATTS 


VAN     CLEVE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Lra 

TORONTO 


VAN    CL  E  VE 


BY 
MARY   S.   WATTS 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  LEGACY,"   "NATHAN   BURKE,"   ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1913 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  1913, 
BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY. 

COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1913. 


Nortoooti  JJ«00 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  — Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 
PAET  I 

CHAPTEE  PAOI 

I.      IN   WHICH   WE   PERFORM    SEVERAL   INTRODUCTIONS          .  1 

II.    CONTAINS  SOME  SLIGHT  MEMOIR  OF  A  RESPECTABLE 

FAMILY  ,        .        .        ...        .15 

III.  SOME  FURTHER  RECOLLECTIONS    .        .        .        .        .35 

IV.  CONCERNING  THE  GILBERTS  AND  SOME  OTHERS  .        .  49 
V.    THE  MAN  OF  THE  HOUSE 70 

VI.    MOSTLY  IDLE  TALK 85 

VII.    TREATS  OF  SUNDRY  AFFAIRS  OF  THE  HEART     .        .  102 

VIII.     THE  INDUSTRIOUS  APPRENTICE 118 

IX.      IN   WHICH   WE    GIVE   A    DOG    A   BAD   NAME     .           .           .  133 

X.    REMEMBER  THE  MAINE! 145 

XL    MRS.  AND  Miss  JAMESON  AT  HOME              .        .  157 

XII.      IN  WHICH   WE   PACK    OUR   VALISES             .           .           •           •  174 

PAET   II 

I.      IN   WHICH   WE    CONCENTRATE    AT   TAMPA          .           .           .  191 

H.  IN  WHICH  A  CERTAIN  KIND  OF  NEWS  TRAVELS  FAST  202 

HI.  KEY  WEST 215 

IV.  ONCE  ABOARD  THE  LUGGER  ! 234 

V.    BUT  'TWAS  A  GLORIOUS  VICTORY!        ....  250 

VI.      IN   WHICH   WE   WITNESS   A    SURRENDER   ....  263 

V 


39382 


vi  CONTENTS 

PART  III 

OHAPTBK  PAGE 

I.      IN  WHICH   WE   RETURN   TO   OUR   MUTTON          «           •           .  283 

II.    IN  WHICH  MR.  KENDRICK  PUTS  HIS  FOOT  DOWN         .  294 

III.  OWING  TO  ILLNESS   IN  THE  FAMILY,  Miss  GILBERT 

REGRETS,    ETC 306 

IV.  IN  WHICH  THE  UNITED  STATES  COMMISSIONER  ISSUES 

A  WARRANT 319 

V.    BUSINESS  WOMEN 335 

VI.    ANOTHER  BUSINESS  WOMAN 346 

VII.      IN  WHICH   WE   CALL   AT   THE   GILBERTS1            •           •           .  360 

VIII.     THE  END  OF  THE  TETHER 378 

IX.    WHICH  is  IN  THE  NATURE  OF  A  FOOTNOTE        ,        .  390 


VAN     CLEVE 


YAN  CLEYE: 

HIS  FRIENDS   AND   HIS  FAMILY 

PART   I 
CHAPTER  I 

IN  WHICH  WE  PERFORM  SEVERAL  INTRODUCTIONS 

THERE  comes  a  time  in  everybody's  life  when  all 
the  most  important  events  of  it  seem,  somehow,  to 
have  occurred  about  ten  years  ago.  Tom  went  into 
business,  Dick  got  married,  Harry  died  —  poor  fellow  ! 
—  Such-a-one  was  born  and  Such-another  started  off 
to  Europe,  Timbuctoo,  the  North  Pole.  These  land 
marks  —  some  of  them  look  a  deal  too  much  like 
gravestones  in  our  little  individual  cemetery  of  fail 
ures  and  regrets  —  considered  in  perspective,  crowd 
together  at  the  far  end  according  to  the  familiar  illu 
sion  of  perspectives ;  and  I  suppose  it  is  Youth  that 
we  may  painfully  discern  vanishing  down  that  indis 
tinguishable  vista,  with  Middle  Age  grimly  or  furtively 
peering  out  of  your  eyes  and  mine  here  in  the  fore 
ground.  The  present  writer,  for  an  instance,  being 
about  to  record  the  circumstances  of  a  first  meeting 
with  certain  of  the  personages  that  figure  herein,  was 
upon  the  point  of  announcing  that  it  took  place  ten 
years  ago,  or  such  a  matter,  when,  in  a  shock  of  recol 
lection,  she  became  aware  that  it  must  be  much  nearer 
twenty  —  alack  and  alas  !  Some  of  us  are  getting 
gray  and  frankly  think  ourselves  luckier  than  some 
others  of  us  who  are  getting  bald;  and  we  might  be 
B  1 


2  VAN  OLE  v~E : 

inquiring  pathetically  for  the  locality  where  blooms 
the  rose  of  yesterday,  if  we  were  not  enough  of  philoso 
phers  to  realize  that  even  for  us  there  is  a  fine  and 
perfectly  satisfying  crop  of  roses  coming  on  to-day,  also. 
So  then,  on  reflection,  it  cannot  be  far  short  of 
twenty  years  since  that,  going  one  day  into  the  cafe*  of 
the  Saint  Simon  Hotel  and  sitting  down  to  luncheon 
with  my  friend  Mr.  J.  B.  Taylor,  we  encountered  the 
following  described  assortment  of  heroes ;  although,  to 
be  sure,  at  the  time  all  parties  were  in  a  comfortable 
state  of  ignorance  of  their  heroic  quality  and  associa 
tions,  and  indeed  one  or  two  have  probably  remained 
so  to  this  day.  J.  B.  and  I  dwelt  no  longer  in  the  city 
of  our  youth ;  there  had  been  many  and  dire  changes 
besides  our  departure  from  it ;  we  were  become  respon 
sible  persons,  heads  of  families,  and  liked,  on  his  brief 
visits,  to  talk  over  the  ancient  times  of  five  years 
back  before  we  were  married  or  had  taken  up  the 
serious  duties  of  life.  During  a  pause,  as  we  were  thus 
engaged  singing  the  Lord's  songs  in  a  strange  land, 
there  walked  in  and  took  seats  at  a  table  near  by  a 
company  of  gentlemen  whom  perhaps  I  may  have 
examined  a  little  too  openly,  being  rather  surprised  to 
see  such  a  force  of  trousers  in  what  was  generally  held 
to  be  the  plume  and  petticoat  district.  Unless  I  was 
much  mistaken,  two  of  them  at  least  felt  themselves 
more  out  of  place  even  than  they  looked  —  a  couple 
of  nice,  fresh,  green,  gawky  boys  about  eighteen  or 
twenty,  and  growing  out  of  their  clothes  in  every 
direction,  clothes  which,  by  the  way,  were  of  a  very 
modest,  inexpensive  style  and  by  no  means  new ;  and 
one  of  the  lads  wore  a  high  collar  which  was  too  tight 
for  him,  with  a  sadly  frayed  edge  that  had  sawed  his 
honest  young  cockerel's  neck  into  a  pitiable  state  of 
rawness.  What  were  these  two,  with  their  awkward 
knees  and  feet  and  elbows,  and  their  coats  crawling 
up  across  their  backs,  and  their  big  schoolboy  hands 


HIS  FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  3 

which  I  am  sure  they  had  only  lately  learned  to  wash, 
and  their  perverse  voices  liable  to  break  into  hideously 
embarrassing  snorts  and  cackles  at  any  moment  - 
what  were  they  doing  among  us?  It  was  plain  they 
would  have  been  having  a  great  deal  more  fun  out 
playing  baseball  this  pleasant,  hot  afternoon ;  for  they 
were  not  at  all  interested  by  the  glittering  atmosphere, 
the  gilt  and  plate  glass  of  the  Saint  Simon  lunch  room  ; 
on  the  contrary,  they  looked  diffidently  bored.  What 
were  they  doing  here? 

At  the  orders  of  one  of  the  older  men  with  them  (who 
themselves  were  being  served  with  whiskey  and  seltzer) , 
a  waiter  came  and  solemnly  set  down  before  each 
young  fellow  a  handsome  tall  glass  of  apollinaris 
lemonade  and  a  plate  of  macaroons  —  whereat  they 
exchanged  a  grin,  and  one  of  them,  happening  to  catch 
my  eye,  turned  very  red  and  exploded  alarmingly  over 
his  drink,  and  had  to  be  clapped  on  the  back  and 
otherwise  shaken  into  self-control  by  his  companion. 
I  could  hear  them  gurgling  hysterically  together  and 
being  reprimanded  in  an  undertone  by  their  elders 
after  I  had  hastily  and,  I  daresay,  rather  confusedly  re 
treated  from  my  inspection. 

I  had  better  never  have  looked  at  all,  of  course ;  for 
later,  glancing  quite  casually  in  that  direction,  I  found 
myself  being  stared  at  with  a  disconcerting  steadiness, 
ogled  clean  out  of  countenance,  in  fact,  by  the  tall, 
slim,  fair  young  man  who  had  ordered  the  boys'  drinks 
(as  I  noticed)  and  who  seemed  to  be  entertaining  the 
entire  party.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  others  were 
conscious  of  it,  but  J.  B.,  his  eyes  travelling  about  the 
room,  at  last  perceived  this  unwelcome  piece  of  atten 
tion.  "  What's  the  matter?  Is  that  fellow  annoying 
you?"  says  J.  B.,  alertly,  making  a  slight,  ominous 
movement  in  his  chair. 

My  friend  is  a  native  of  our  fine  old  neighboring 
Commonwealth  of  Kentucky,  and  of  a  truly  Kentuckian 


4  VAN   CLEVE: 

stature  and  development.  One  would  think  that  the 
man  who  should  offer  to  annoy  any  woman  in  Mr. 
Taylor's  company  might  with  propriety  be  ignored  as 
presenting  a  promising  subject  for  the  commissioners 
in  lunacy  —  a  view  which,  however,  never  occurs  to 
J.  B.  "That  fellow  getting  fresh?"  he  inquired,  turn 
ing  himself  about  briskly  and  formidably  on  the  spin 
dling  little  decorated  Chippendale  chair  that  creaked  in 
anguish  under  his  weight.  "Don't  worry.  I  won't 
have  any  row  with  him  here,  of  course  !"  says  J.  B., 
reassuringly,  in  an  aside  to  me,  the  while  he  discharged 
a  glance  as  pacific  as  a  volley  from  a  six-shooter  at  the 
offender,  who,  for  his  part,  remained  quite  cool  and 
brazen  and  eyed  us  both  all  over  again  placidly ! 

And  now  I  am  obliged  regretfully  to  state  that  as 
this  is  no  romance,  but  a  plain  history  of  plain  events, 
after  the  above  magnificently  sensational,  swash 
buckling  beginning,  this  incident  ended,  faded  out, 
trickled  off,  as  one  might  say,  in  the  feeblest  and  tamest 
fashion  imaginable.  For,  before  any  more  looks  or 
words  could  be  exchanged,  the  fourth  man  at  the  other 
table  jumped  up  and,  advancing  with  his  hand  out  in 
a  cordial  style,  said  affably:  "Mr.  Breckinridge- 
Taylor,  if  I'm  not  mistaken  ?  How  d'ye  do,  sir  ?  I've 
been  trying  for  a  solid  quarter  of  an  hour  to  get  you  to 
look  at  me  —  tried  mental  telegraphy,  thought  trans- 
ferrence,  hypnotic  suggestion  —  no  use  !  You  wouldn't 
turnaround.  How  d'ye  do,  sir  ?" 

Mr.  Breckinridge-Taylor  —  an  arrangement  of  his 
name  which,  as  all  his  friends  know,  this  gentleman 
not  only  never  uses,  but  particularly  dislikes  —  got  up, 
pretty  red  in  the  face,  and  stammering  out:  "Oh- 
why  —  ah  —  how  d'ye  do — ?"  in  a  rather  comical 
surprise  and  discomfiture.  It  was  not  easy  for  him  to 
adjust  either  his  look  or  temper  to  so  sudden  a  change 
of  attitude ;  for  even  the  indignant  chivalry  of  Ken 
tucky  could  scarcely  return  this  innocent,  jolly,  kind 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  5 

greeting  by  proclaiming  :  "Sir,  your  friend  yonder  - 
who  is  apparently  paying  for  your  luncheon -- has 
been  making  himself  stupidly  offensive  to  this  lady, 
my  guest ;  and  I  therefore  propose  at  my  convenience 
to  punch  his  head  for  him!"  Indeed,  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know  exactly  what  line  of  conduct  the 
treatises  on  etiquette  would  recommend  for  such  an 
occasion;  seldom  have  I  beheld  J.  B.  so  flustered. 
"Oh  —  ah  —  Major—  "  he  said  again  disjointedly,  and 
shook  the  other's  hand  like  an  automaton.  "No  —  I 
- 1  didn't  see  you  —  I  didn't  know  you  were  here  — 

And  in  another  half -minute,  to  my  amused  astonish 
ment,  there  was  J.  B.  being  introduced  to  the  whole 
pack  of  them,  as  if  no  meeting  could  have  been  more 
timely  and  desirable  —  hail-fellow-well-met,  hands- 
all-around  !  "Mr.  Philip  Cortwright,  a  young  friend 
of  mine.  .  .  ."  This  was  the  blond  and  good-looking 
lady-killer,  who  went  through  the  presentation  wTith 
entire  ease,  although  J.  B.  contrived  to  make  his  own 
nod  emphatically  cool,  distant,  and  non-committal, 
I  thought ;  but  no  amount  of  snubbing  seemed  likely 
to  take  effect  on  this  cavalier's  metallic  equanimity. 
" .  .  .  and  my  nephew,  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  Mr.  Taylor, 
and  this  is  a  chum  of  his,  Bob  Gilbert.  Boys,  this  is 
Mr.  Breckinridge-Taylor  that  you  hear  me  talk  about 
so  much  —  you  know  all  about  Mr.  Breckinridge- 
Taylor,  don't  you,  Van?  Often  heard  me  mention 
him,  hey?" 

"Why,  no,  not  that  I  remember,"  blundered 
out  the  youth,  honestly;  and  then  crimsoned  all 
over  his  face  and  his  liberal-sized  ears  at  the  terrific 
breach  of  manners  he  saw  too  late  he  had  committed ; 
the  other  boy,  the  Gilbert  one,  jogged  him  in  the  ribs ; 
it  was  an  appalling  moment  for  both  of  them ;  but, 
fortunately,  went  unnoticed  by  every  one  except  myself, 
I  believe,  in  the  sort  of  friendly  hullaballoo  their 
sponsor  was  so  busily  creating.  He  was  a  slender, 


6  VAN  CLEVE: 

flourishing  gentleman,  considerably  older  than  any  of 
the  rest  of  us,  with  amiable  blue  eyes,  and  fine  aquiline 
features ;  and  gray  hair  and  mustachios  both  worn 
quite  full,  long,  and  flowing,  in  a  taste  one  does  not  often 
see  nowadays ;  and  with,  furthermore,  a  long,  flapping 
frock-coat  held  in  by  one  button  below  the  waist-line, 
and  a  waistcoat  cut  down  low  to  show  a  great  expanse 
of  shirt-front  and  a  black  string-tie  —  all  of  which, 
taken  with  his  military  title,  immediately  and  power 
fully  suggested  blue-grass,  mint-juleps,  blooded  horses, 
Uncle  Tom,  and,  in  short,  all  the  other  hall-marks  of 
that  fine  old  State  from  which,  as  I  have  just  explained, 
J.  B.  B. -Taylor  himself  hailed.  So  when  the  latter 
presently  came  back  to  our  table  and  sat  down  again, 
having  separated  from  his  new  friends  on  the  best  of 
terms,  although  still  with  a  somewhat  cloudy,  puzzled, 
and  dissatisfied  expression,  I  said  harmlessly,  "You 
know  Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersville,  it  seems  ?"  The 
book  was  recently  out  and  being  read  by  everybody ; 
and  that  was  what  I  had  privately  christened  the  gray 
mustache  instantly  upon  seeing  him,  so  pronounced 
was  his  type. 

"Hey?  Oh,  you  mean  him f"  said  J.  B. ;  "yes,  I 
know  him  —  he's  a  Major  Van  Cleve.  But  he's  not 
a  Southern  man.  I  don't  know  why  it  is,"  J.  B.  went 
on  touchily ;  "every  time  anybody  up  here  sees  a  man 
with  a  Prince  Albert  coat  and  a  slouch  hat  and  his  hair 
a  little  long,  they  begin  right  away  on  the  Suwanee 
River  and  the  Lost  Cause  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  They 
think  these  stage  Southerners  are  the  real  thing. 
Why,  you  heard  him  call  me  Breckinridge-Taylor, 
didn't  you  ?  That  ought  to  have  given  him  away. 
Can  you  imagine  any  man  born  South  calling  a  fellow- 
creature's  name  that  way?  Breckinridge-Taylor!" 
ejaculated  J.  B.  in  implacable  disgust;  "anybody 
that  tried  to  get  that  off  down  in  Bourbon  County 
would  get  lynched  !" 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  7 

"  You  know  he  looks  Southern,"  I  said  acutely ;  "why 
do  you  resent  it  so  ?  Is  it  because  you  don't  like  him  ? 
If  you  liked  him,  he  might  look  as  if  he  came  from  Texas 
or  Tien-Tsin,  you  wouldn't  care." 

He  got  red  again,  and  said  I  was  just  like  all  the  rest 
of  the  women,  and  made  up  my  mind  to  something 
without  any  reason  for  it  "  .  .  .  right  off  the  bat,  and 
then  no  power  on  earth  can  ever  make  you  change  it ! 
I  don't  know  that  I  like  or  dislike  old  Van  Cleve,  and 
it  would  be  ridiculous  for  me  to  resent  anything  about 
him.  As  to  where  he  comes  from,  it's  neither  one  of 
those  places  you  mention,  although,"  said  J.  B.  a  little 
dryly,  "I  don't  believe  they'd  consider  themselves 
particularly  unlucky  to  have  lost  him.  He  comes  from 
somewhere  up  in  your  own  State,  Chillicothe  or  Lan 
caster,  or  —  or  New  Skeeterville,  Sorghum  County. 
And  he  got  his  title  in  the  Civil  War,  when  he  enlisted 
in  the  Ninety-nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-ninth  Ohio 
Volunteer  Cavalry.  Is  it  possible  that  you  have  never 
heard  of  that  regiment?  Such  is  Fame  !"  J.  B.  con 
cluded  with  an  ironic  sigh  ;  indeed,  he  had  delivered  this 
whole  speech  in  a  style  of  sour  humor  entirely  foreign 
to  him,  having  plainly  been  very  much  ruffled  by 
the  late  occurrences.  And  it  was  odd  and  pleasing  to 
see  how  quickly  he  regretted  this  display  of  irritation. 
"I  don't  know  much  about  old  Van  Cleve.  I  really 
oughtn't  to  say  anything.  I  don't  want  to  give  you 
a  wrong  impression,"  he  added  precipitately,  anxious 
and  contrite. 

"How  on  earth  did  you  come  to  know  him?"  I 
could  not  forbear  asking. 

"Why,  met  him  first  down  in  Florida  —  Palatka, 
Florida.  My  father  had  an  interest  in  an  orange 
grove  down  there  at  one  time,  and  we  spent  a 
winter  there  once  —  oh,  it  must  be  ten  or  fifteen 
years  ago  now.  The  Van  Cleves,  that  is,  the  Major 
and  his  people,  he's  got  a  whole  houseful  of  women 


8  VAN  CLEVE: 

relatives,  sisters  or  something,  I  don't  remember 
much  about  them  —  anyhow,  they  owned  the  grove 
next  to  ours.  I  think  they  lived  there  a  year  or 
two.  Then  the  Major  went  broke  —  frost  knocked 
out  the  oranges,  I  suppose  —  I've  a  vague  recollection 
of  hearing  about  it.  That  sort  of  thing  is  all  the  time 
happening  in  Florida.  They  sold  out  and  moved 
away.  I've  run  across  Van  Cleve  every  now  and  then 
since,  and  he  always  remembers  me.  I  don't  know 
what  he  does ;  they  have  some  little  property,  I  believe. 
One  of  those  boys  is  his  nephew,  he  told  me  just  now. 
Your  goo-goo-eyed  friend  isn't  any  relation,  I  think." 
J.  B.  brushed  the  crumbs  at  the  side  of  his  plate  into 
a  minute  heap,  and  scowled  at  it  pensively.  "  You  see, 
it's  the  merest  acquaintance,"  he  ended. 

All  this  conversation  we  had  conducted  in  a  properly 
subdued  fashion;  nevertheless,  I  was  sure  that  the 
other  table  knew  we  were  talking  about  them,  and  sure, 
moreover,  that  they  were  talking  about  us.  The  Major 
was  asking  questions ;  the  boys  were  explaining  some 
thing.  But  now  their  party  began  to  break  up ;  that 
is,  the  blond  Mr.  Cortwright  arose  and  took  his  leave 
of  the  rest,  excusing  himself  on  account  of  a  "  business 
engagement,"  as  I  overheard  him  elaborately  announc 
ing,  and  he  went  off  without  further  notice  of  us  or  of 
my  friend's  final  glare.  Presently  thereafter,  Major 
Van  Cleve,  having  held  some  kind  of  conference  with 
his  two  boys,  himself  got  up  and  came  over  towards  us 
with  sundry  interrogative  and  semi-apologetic  glances 
and  hemmings  and  hawings  directed  at  J.  B. 

"Er  —  ah  —  one  moment  —  if  you'll  pardon  me,  Mr. 
Taylor  —  ?" 

My  friend  rose  in  his  turn  with  a  wondering  look, 
and  I  began  to  think  that  the  Major  might  just  pos 
sibly  be  " broke"  once  again  and  seeking  a  loan,  in 
which  case  I  had  better  be  gazing  out  of  the  window 
and  temporarily  deaf.  No  such  thing.  What  Mr.  or 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  9 

Major  Van  Cleve  wanted,  of  all  things  in  this  world, 
was  to  meet  me!  "I  couldn't  get  out  of  it,"  J.  B.  said 
to  me  afterwards ;  ' i  when  he  said  he  had  a  letter  of 
introduction  to  you,  you  know  - 

"The  fact  is,  madame,"  the  Major  explained  with 
his  amiable  flourish;  "when  my  young  friend,  Robert 
Gilbert  here,  divulged  the  fact  that  he  not  only  knew 
you,  but  had  often  met  you  —  in  church,  I  presume,  of 
course,  hey,  Robert — ?"  here  he  executed  a  pro 
digiously  playful  diabolic  wink  at  the  young  fellow,  who 
colored  and  fidgeted  and  ended  by  grinning  at  me  in 
an  exceedingly  taking  way,  honest,  bashful,  and  hu 
morous —  "I  say  when  my  young  gentleman  said  he 
knew  you,"  repeated  the  Major;  "the  name  caught 
my  attention,  and  after  a  question  or  two  I  decided 
you  must  be  the  lady  we  were  recommended  to  - 
meaning  my  sister's  family  and  myself,  madame  —  by 
a  mutual  acquaintance.  I  have  her  letter  here,  I  be 
lieve  —  "  and  forthwith  he  searched  out  the  document 
from  his  pockets,  letter-case,  and  so  on  with  rather 
impressive  gestures  and  presented  it  to  me  ceremo 
niously.  "I  meant  to  have  called,  of  course,  and  still 
hope  to  be  allowed  to  give  myself  that  pleasure.  But 
no  time  like  the  present,  you  know  !  Especially  as  I 
observed  we  had  another  mutual  acquaintance  in  Mr. 
Breckinridge-Taylor,"  says  Major  Van  Cleve,  smiling 
jovially  upon  J.  B.  I  was  about  to  answer  with  some 
ordinary  civil  speech,  when  the  Gilbert  boy,  who  had 
had  the  air  of  waiting  anxiously  and  uncomfortably  to 
account  for  himself,  struck  in  abruptly  in  his  frank, 
rough,  boyish  voice. 

"I  —  I  didn't  say  I  knew  you  —  not  exactly  that 
way,  I  mean,"  he  blurted  out,  casting  a  worried  look 
at  the  older  gentleman's  suave  countenance.  "You 
don't  know  anything  about  me,  I  don't  believe,  but 
I'm  Professor  Gilbert's  son  —  at  the  University,  you 
know.  You  know  my  mother  and  Lorrie  —  my  sister 


10  VAN  CLEVE: 

Lorrie,  you  know  her — ?"  And,  sure  enough,  on  this 
hint,  I  recalled  certain  glimpses  I  had  had  of  some 
youth's  long,  gangling  legs  and  tousled  head  and 
muddy  boots  and  glaring  striped  blazer  jacket  vanish 
ing  in  a  panic  of  shyness  or  annoyance  from  the  ham 
mock  on  the  porch  or  the  sway-bottomed  lounge  in  the 
parlor  at  the  sound  of  my  entrance  when  I  went  to 
call  on  Mrs.  and  Miss  Gilbert ;  so  unquestionably  I 
should  have  recognized  Mr.  Robert  from  the  first. 
However,  he  was  very  far  from  feeling  any  resentment 
about  it.  "I  didn't  say  I  knew  you  —  not  that  way, 
that  is,  you  know  -  "he  murmured  over  again,  plainly 
much  troubled  at  the  suggestion. 

We  all  sat  down  once  more,  Major  Van  Cleve  accept 
ing  an  invitation  to  join  our  table  very  pleasantly, 
though  both  of  his  young  companions  would  un 
doubtedly  have  been  glad  to  escape,  if  either  could 
have  devised  a  proper-sounding  excuse.  The  Major, 
who  seemed,  for  his  part,  to  be  a  ready,  fluent  person 
of  ample  social  experience  and  able  to  keep  an  easy 
countenance  on  almost  any  occasion,  laughingly  said 
that  these  introductions  reminded  him  a  little  of  an 
incident  in  the  life  of  his  grandfather  which  he  had 
often  heard  the  old  gentleman  relate,  when  he  was 
presented  at  a  ball  in  some  private  house  in  Philadelphia 
to  President  and  Mrs.  Washington.  ".  .  .  He  was  a 
very  young  man  at  the  time,  and  naturally  quite  over 
come  in  the  presence  of  all  the  great  people,  and  when 
he  was  taken  up  to  make  his  bow  before  Lady  Wash 
ington  (that's  what  they  called  her,  you  know)  the 
best  he  could  do  was  to  stutter,  '  I  —  I'm  sure  you're 
vastly  honored  to  meet  me,  Lady  Washington  ! '  get 
ting  his  speech  end  for  end,  as  you  see,  in  the  most 
ludicrous  way.  My  grandfather  used  to  say  he  never 
could  forget  the  beautiful  courtesy  with  which  she 
passed  it  over,  saying,  i Thank  you,  Mr.  Van  Cleve,' 
without  the  suspicion  of  a  smile.  But  he  said  the 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  11 

President  heard  the  whole  thing  and  burst  out  laugh 
ing  so  that  everybody  in  the  room  stared.  It  was  a 
very  unusual  thing  for  Washington  to  laugh,  you  know 
—  he  wasn't  at  all  a  humorous  man.  Afterwards,  how 
ever,  when  my  grandfather  got  to  knowing  them  in 
timately,  they  often  used  to  laugh  together  over  that 
first  meeting.  When  I  was  a  little  fellow,  I  could 
sometimes  coax  the  old  gentleman  to  talk  about  those 
days,"  the  Major  finished  with  a  look  of  amused  and 
tender  retrospection. 

"Your  grandfather  must  have  had  some  very  inter 
esting  experiences,"  I  said  after  a  short  silence,  dur 
ing  which  nobody  else  seemed  disposed  to  make  talk. 
J.  B.  had  visibly  adopted  the  normal  American  man's 
attitude  of  letting  the  women  attend  to  the  conversa 
tion,  and  the  two  lads  had  subsided  into  thankful 
dumbness. 

"  Yes,  oh,  yes.  And  by  the  way,  he  used  to  say  that 
the  cherry-tree-and-little-hatchet  story,  contrary  to 
our  enlightened  popular  view  nowadays,  was  perfectly 
true/'  said  Major  Van  Cleve ;  "he  had  it  from  Lady 
Washington's  own  lips.  'Only,  you  know,  Stan,'  she 
said  to  him  (his  name  was  Stanton,  the  same  as  mine, 
madame), '  his  father  didn't  let  George  off  that  way  at 
all.  He  gave  him  a  fearful  caning ;  and  I  think  that's 
the  reason  the  General  doesn't  like  to  have  that  story 
repeated  to  this  day.  It  puts  them  both  in  such  a  bad 
light,  anyhow.'' 

J.  B.  said,  "Ah?";  and  after  another  pause,  "Mr. 
Cort wright  a  friend  of  yours?"  he  inquired  irrele 
vantly. 

The  Major  coughed.  "Well  —  er  —  ahem  —  we  — 
we've  known  him  some  time  —  '  he  began  to  say, 
hesitating  ever  so  slightly ;  and  for  half  an  instant  I 
thought  a  kind  of  indecision  showed  in  his  mild  blue 
gaze,  as  if  he  scented  hostile  opinion,  and  was  uncer 
tain  whether  the  best  policy  was  to  placate  or  join 


12  VAN  CLEVE: 

with  it.  But  the  nephew  interrupted  him ;  broke  in 
pretty  rudely,  in  fact. 

"No,"  he  said  squarely  to  J.  B.  "No,  he's  no  par 
ticular  friend.  He  works  in  the  same  office  I  do,  that's 
all,  —  Steinberger  &  Hirsch,  Brokers,  Walnut  Street, 
just  off  of  Third." 

"I  know  that  firm,"  said  my  friend;  and  he  looked 
at  Mr.  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  with  some  slight  in 
terest,  thinking  perhaps  —  as  I  myself  was  thinking  — 
that  the  boy  was  young  to  be  working  anywhere,  and 
also  that  his  manner,  if  plain  and  straightforward,  was 
still,  somehow  or  other,  not  wholly  agreeable.  He  had 
nothing  of  his  uncle's  gentle  and  friendly  disposition, 
that  was  easily  seen ;  and  I  doubted  whether  it  would 
ever  be  possible  for  him  to  learn  any  such  tact  and 
regard  for  conventions. 

"  Cort wright's  my  friend,  though,"  said  the  other 
boy,  eagerly  —  even  a  little  defensively ;  but  then  the 
Major  intervened,  steering  the  talk  away  from  what  he 
apparently  felt  to  be  a  risky  subject  with  admirable 
adroitness. 

"Brokerage  is  a  very  remunerative  business,  I  make 
no  doubt.  At  least  Van's  employers  have  the  name  of 
being  money-makers ;  isn't  that  so,  Mr.  Taylor?"  he 
said.  "These  brokers  and  bankers!"  He  shook  his 
head  and  gave  a  short,  humorous  sigh.  "Well,  well,  I 
might  have  been  one,  too,  I  suppose,  but  it  wasn't 
ordained  that  I  should  ever  accumulate !  Just  about 
the  time  I  would  have  been  going  into  business,  the 
War  came  on,  and  of  course  that  settled  it  for  me." 
He  addressed  me.  "You  can't  imagine  —  you're 
far  too  young  to  remember  —  what  kind  of  times  those 
were  for  boys,  madame." 

"I  thought  you  were  a  Southerner  when  I  first  saw 
you,"  I  told  him. 

"Yes,  a  good  many  people  take  me  for  one. 
We  old  army  fellows  all  get  to  looking  alike,  I 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  13 

believe.  And  for  that  matter  there  was  mighty  little 
difference  between  us  at  the  time  —  mighty  little.  We 
were  just  two  sets  of  American  boys  out  for  a  good 
time  —  just  American  boys!"  declared  Major  Van 
Cleve  with  fervor.  "Why,  madame,  just  for  an  illus 
tration,  I  remember  something  that  occurred  in  my  own 
personal  experience  down  in  Tennessee,  not  long  before 
Chickamauga.  I  was  detailed  to  take  some  men  and 
destroy  a  railroad  bridge  and  a  few  hundred  yards  of 
ties  and  rails  in  the  rebel  territory  just  outside  our 
lines.  The  object  was  to  cut  their  communications, 
you  understand,  of  course  —  ?" 

We  all  did  understand,  of  course,  and  the  Major 
went  on :  — 

"They  called  for  volunteers,  appearing  to  think  the 
enterprise  rather  risky.  /  couldn't  see  it  that  way," 
said  the  military  gentleman  with  some  contempt;  "I 
thought  it  was  a  good  deal  of  a  lark.  And  we  did 
have  a  lark  —  never  had  so  much  fun  in  my  life  ! 
Pretty  near  the  whole  regiment  volunteered,  but  they 
picked  out  the  biggest,  strongest,  strappingest  fellows, 
of  course  —  no  joke  tearing  up  ties  and  rails,  you  know. 
There  wasn't  one  of  us  under  six  feet,  and  we  were  all 
athletes  —  athletes  and  hard  as  nails.  We  had  a  little 
wheezy  old  engine  and  tender  and  some  kind  of  ram 
shackle  caboose  tacked  on  behind;  and  we  got  to  the 
place  and  got  through  the  job  without  much  annoy 
ance  —  half  a  dozen  or  so  Confederates  potting  at  us 
from  a  hill  about  an  eighth  of  a  mile  off,  but  nothing 
else  to  speak  of.  They  weren't  strong  enough  to 
attack.  But  by  the  time  we  started  to  go  back,  they'd 
got  a  reenforcement  from  somewhere,  and  were  smart 
enough  to  line  up  on  both  sides  of  the  track  so  as  to 
get  a  good  crack  as  we  went  by.  Could  hardly  miss 
at  that  distance,  you  know,  especially  as  our  train 
wasn't  exactly  a  lightning-express  —  and  they  were 
pretty  close  together,  too,  let  me  tell  you.  We  had  a 


14  VAN   CLEVE: 

nigger  engineer  and  fireman  that  we'd  shanghied  into 
going,  but  of  course  the  minute  the  bullets  began  to 
sing,  those  darkies  just  collapsed  on  the  floor  of  the 
cab.  I  swear  you  couldn't  have  made  a  rag-carpet 
any  flatter;  we  boys  got  so  full  of  laugh  we  couldn't 
sight  our  guns.  One  of  us,  a  little  wiry,  active  runt, 
not  much  bigger  than  a  twelve-year-old  boy,  crawled 
over  the  tender  into  the  cab  and  opened  up  the  throttle, 
and  —  and  your  humble  servant  volunteered  to  stoke," 
said  the  Major,  looking  correspondingly  modest;  "so 
we  got  through  somehow,  though  it  was  tolerably  hot 
for  a  while.  But  what  I  was  going  to  say,  madame, 
to  illustrate  the  real  good  feeling  in  the  ranks  on  both 
sides,  after  we'd  run  through  'em  into  comparative 
safety,  we  looked  back,  and  there  were  the  gallant  fellows 
cheering  and  waving  their  hats  at  us  !  They  had  done 
their  best  to  get  us,  but  they  were  just  as  glad  we 
escaped  as  we  were  !  We  had  one  or  two  wounded,  — 
nothing  serious,  —  but  poor  Alf  Harper,  the  little  fellow 
that  took  the  engineer's  place,  dropped  dead  in  the 
bottom  of  the  cab,  after  it  was  all  over.  We  thought 
he'd  been  shot,  but  there  wasn't  a  mark  on  him.  Ex 
citement,  the  surgeons  said,  pure  excitement !  Singu 
lar,  wasn't  it  ?  He  wasn't  a  strong  man,  anyway,  and 
simply  couldn't  stand  the  strain." 

"He  was  one  of  the  athletes,  I  suppose,"  murmured 
J.  B.,  mildly. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  Major  heard  this  obser 
vation;  he  kept  on  talking  in  his  lively  and  com 
panionable  way.  But  young  Kendrick,  his  nephew, 
gave  us  all  a  quick  look,  and  turned  red  in  a  distressing 
fashion,  and  hung  down  his  head,  fingering  the  table 
cloth.  All  at  once  I  felt  myself  liking  the  poor  young 
cub  better,  manners  or  no  manners;  and  thoroughly 
understood  now  why  it  was  that  my  friend  J.  B.  did 
not  seem  to  fancy  much  Major  Stanton  Van  Cleve, 


CHAPTER  II 

CONTAINS  SOME  SLIGHT  MEMOIR  OF  A  RESPECTABLE 

FAMILY 

SOME  few  years  back  at  about  that  date  in  our  na 
tional  history  when  Mr.  Nast  was  drawing  cartoons 
about  the  Tweed  Ring ;  when  every  stray  child  was 
suspected  of  being  Charley  Ross ;  when  Goldsmith 
Maid  held  the  trotting  record  ;  when  the  youthful  Miss 
Mary  Anderson  was  essaying ' '  Juliet ' '  and ' '  Parthenia  "  ; 
when  ladies  wore  pull-backs  and  waterfalls,  and  men 
made  the  landscape  glad  with  the  spectacle  of  flowing 
side- whiskers,  low-necked  waistcoats,  and  diamond 
shirt-studs  —  briefly,  about  the  years  1872  or  '73, 
two  very  handsome  weddings  took  place  in  the  high 
circles  of  a  certain  Ohio  city,  to  both  of  which  the 
fashionable  columns  in  all  the  local  papers  of  the  day 
refer  in  the  richest  terms.  You  may  read  therein  that 
Miss  Helen  Van  Cleve  was  united  in  marriage  to  Mr. 
Harrison  Glaive  Kendrick  at  Christ  Episcopal  Church, 
six  o'clock  the  evening  of  June  fourteenth,  in  the  pres 
ence  of  a  brilliant  gathering  of  friends  and  relatives ; 
there  were  six  bridesmaids  and  six  groomsmen ;  the 
bride  was  given  away  by  her  brother,  Major  Stanton 
Van  Cleve ;  her  dress  was  a  magnificent  creation  of 
white  grosgrain  with  garniture  of  white  velvet  bows  and 
white  silk  fringe,  and  she  carried  a  bouquet  of  roses, 
white  carnations,  and  maidenhair  fern  in  a  filigree  gold 
holder  (the  gift  of  the  groom),  etc.,  etc.  In  the  autumn 
of  the  same  year  the  Van  Cleve  household  furnished 
another  and  similar  social  sensation.  This  time, 

15 


16  VAN  CLEVE: 

according  to  the  same  reliable  sources  of  information, 
Miss  Myra  Van  Cleve  was  united  in  marriage  to  Mr. 
Richard  Lucas,  supported  by  an  equal  number  of 
attendants,  given  away  by  the  same  military  hero, 
dressed  and  decorated  with  identical  elegance.  There 
is  a  photograph  yet  in  existence  of  the  two  pretty  young 
women  taken  together  in  their  wedding  finery,  the 
grosgrains  made  alike,  with  duplicate  bouquets,  mon 
strous,  mathematically  circular,  the  roses  and  carna 
tions  packed  tight  within  frills  of  lace  paper ;  they  smile 
from  out  their  white  illusion  and  orange-blossoms, 
happy  and  satisfied,  and  each  one,  without  a  doubt, 
serenely  convinced  of  the  excellence  of  her  own  choice, 
and  wondering  tolerantly  in  private  at  her  sister's. 
The  heart  grows  young  again  to  see  them. 

The  Van  Cleve  brides  were  twins  and  ten  or  twelve 
years  younger  than  their  brother  Stanton,  being  all 
of  them  children  of  Joshua  Van  Cleve  and  his  wife, 
who  was  one  of  the  Zanes  of  Wheeling,  a  staunch  old 
pioneer  family.  Joshua  came  out  here  from  Phila 
delphia  or  Germantown  somewhere  about  1840,  and 
went  into  the  commission  business,  in  which  he  amassed 
a  considerable  fortune ;  but  he  had  been  dead  a  good 
while  at  the  time  of  these  weddings.  The  widow  was 
living  in  comfortable  style  in  the  large,  double,  brick 
house  with  the  tall  doors  and  windows  and  the  Mansard 
roof  that  her  husband  built  shortly  after  the  war, 
during  the  course  of  which  struggle  Mr.  Van  Cleve  had 
repeatedly  foreseen  and  taken  advantage  of  the  fluctua 
tions  of  the  cotton,  grain,  and  provision  markets  with 
admirable  sagacity  and  fearlessness,  and  always  to 
great  profit.  He  did  not  enjoy  his  bricks  and  mortar 
and  his  Mansard  roof  very  long ;  we  brought  nothing 
into  the  world  with  us,  and  it  is  certain  we  can  take 
nothing  away.  Already  five  years  after  his  death, 
the  property  he  left  exhibited  a  woful  shrinkage;  it 
is  to  be  feared  the  Van  Cleve  heirs  were  a  rather  im- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  17 

practical,  helpless  set.  An  elderly  gentleman  of  my 
acquaintance  (Judge  A.  B.  Lewis,  in  fact,  a  well-known 
figure  on  our  bench  whom  most  people  will  remember), 
long  engaged  in  the  legal  profession  and  the  manage 
ment  and  winding-up  of  estates,  who  had  had  some 
experience  with  the  family,  delivered  his  opinion  of  them 
to  me  (on  request)  in  pretty  plain  words.  "The  Van 
Cleves  ?  Oh,  yes,  I  know  who  you  mean  —  know  them 
all  well/'  he  said,  stroking  his  chin,  whereon  he  wore 
a  pointed  goatee  of  the  classic  American  pattern ;  t '  we 
used  to  attend  to  a  piece  of  property  on  South  High 
for  the  widow  —  collected  the  rents  for  a  number  of 
years.  No,  they  never  lived  in  Columbus ;  but  Mr. 
Van  Cleve  owned  considerable  real  estate,  I  believe, 
all  through  this  central  section  of  the  State,  in  one  town 
or  another.  I  used  to  see  a  good  deal  of  him,  at  one 
time,  and  I've  always  kept  track  of  the  family  - 
up  to  the  last  few  years,  that  is.  Now  you  say  they've 
turned  up  down  there  with  you?  Van  Cleve  himself 
was  a  very  solid  sort  of  man  —  a  hard  worker  —  a  man 
of  force.  It  was  a  pity  that  fine  property  he'd  got 
together  was  all  dissipated  so  soon,  although  that's 
such  a  common  occurrence  people  don't  pay  much 
attention  to  it.  Of  course  you  couldn't  expect  the 
Van  Cleve  women  to  know  anything  about  taking  care 
of  their  money;  but  there's  a  kind  of  a  parsimonious 
streak  in  pretty  nearly  every  woman  —  if  you  don't 
mind  my  saying  so  —  and  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  and  the  girls 
would  have  probably  held  on  to  the  estate  longer,  if 
it  hadn't  been  for  the  son.  I  knew  him,  too,  but  I 
haven't  seen  him  or  any  of  'em  for  five  or  six  years. 
I  think  they've  travelled  about  a  good  deal ;  every 
time  they  sold  a  piece  of  property,  they'd  make  a  move 
-go  to  Europe  or  somewhere.  That's  the  kind 
they  are,  you  know.  You  say  you  met  Stanton  the 
other  day?  He  must  be  forty-five  or  fifty  years  old 
now.  Yes,  he  was  in  the  army,  First  Lieutenant  in 


18  VAN   CLEVE: 

the  Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-ninth  —  oh,  yes,  that9 s 
perfectly  true.  No,  he  never  got  any  higher  than  that. 
Fact  is,  as  I  remember  being  told,  Stanton  never  was 
in  any  engagement,  somehow.  He  was  always  at  home 
on  furlough,  or  sick,  or  something,  whenever  there  was 
any  fighting  going  on.  He  was  first  called  by  that  title 
of  Major,  I  understand,  when  he  was  training  boys  in 
some  military  academy  at  Painesville  or  Sandusky  up 
in  that  part  of  the  country,  after  the  War  was  over. 
I  don't  believe  old  Josh  Van  Cleve  ever  took  much 
stock  in  his  son  Stanton ;  but  he  made  him  work ;  he 
was  a  pretty  good  hand  at  keeping  everybody  up  to 
the  mark.  However,  he  died,  in  'sixty-eight  or  along 
there,  and  then  the  Major  came  home  to  live,  and  I 
never  heard  of  his  doing  a  stroke  of  work  afterwards. 
You  say  you  saw  him  ?  Well,  well !  How  was  he 
looking  ?  Seedy  ?  They  can't  have  much  left  by  this 
time.  That  young  Kendrick  must  be  poor  Helen's 
son.  Did  anybody  say  anything  about  Myra  —  Mrs. 
Lucas,  I  mean,  you  know  ?  She  was  the  other  daughter." 
Mrs.  Helen  Kendrick  died  within  a  year  of  her  mar 
riage,  which  was  the  reason  my  old  friend  spoke  of  her 
so  pityingly.  She  left  a  baby  of  two  months,  whom 
they  had  had  baptized  by  her  family  name,  and  whom 
her  mother  and  sister  took  into  their  own  keeping  after 
the  poor  young  wife's  death.  They  all  lived  together 
for  a  while  under  that  same  paternal  Mansard,  in  the 
amiable  delusion  that  the  several  families  each  saved 
money  thereby;  though  Heaven  knows  what  queer, 
helter-skelter  accounts  they  kept,  or  how  heavily  this 
economical  arrangement  bore  on  the  widowed  grand 
mother.  Her  husband's  will  left  almost  the  entire 
property  at  her  sole  disposal,  and  she  seems  to  have 
been  a  generous,  high-handed  sort  of  woman,  the  last 
person  in  the  world  to  deny  either  herself  or  her  children 
anything  in  reason  —  or  out  of  it.  It  was  also  true 
that  Stanton,  being  more  or  less  of  an  invalid  from 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  19 

injuries  received  on  the  field  of  battle,  as  everybody 
knew  or  had  heard  (whatever  Judge  Lewis  might  say 
to  the  contrary),  required  this  spacious  home  and  con 
genial  surroundings.  There  they  all  lived,  then,  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  and  Major  Stanton,  and  the  remaining 
daughter  and  the  two  sons-in-law,  the  whole  tribe  of 
them,  to  whom,  in  no  great  while  after  Master  Van 
Cleve  Kendrick's  appearance,  there  was  added  another 
baby,  a  girl  this  time,  little  Evelyn  Lucas  —  Evelyn 
being  the  somewhat  rococo  name  her  parents  bestowed 
on  her. 

Then  Lucas  died.  He  had  a  weak  heart  and  died 
with  dreadful  suddenness  of  sunstroke  the  hot  summer 
of  ' eighty-one.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  Van  Cleve 
house  was  one  of  mourning  and  tragedy  and  a  pur 
suing  Fate.  Judge  Lewis,  for  all  he  was  so  familiar 
with  the  Van  Cleves,  and  with  all  the  ins  and  outs  of 
their  relationships  and  affairs,  could  only  speak  in  a 
very  vague  way  about  the  two  men  whom  the  girls 
married ;  neither  of  them  had  what  you  might  call 
good  luck,  he  intimated.  He  had  never  heard  any 
thing  against  them ;  they  were  young  fellows  and  had 
not  had  much  chance  to  show  what  was  in  them  (if  any 
thing).  Kendrick  got  the  gold-mining  fever,  and  went 
out  West  to  the  Black  Hills,  where  he  contracted  a  lung 
trouble  from  exposure  and  the  roughness  of  the  life, 
from  which  he  never  recovered.  He  came  back  home, 
lingered  in  a  decline  for  some  months,  and  finally  died 
at  Cresson  Springs,  Pennsylvania,  where  they  had  taken 
him  on  one  of  those  futile  and  pathetic  journeys  that 
consumptives  are  forever  making  up  to  the  last  moment 
of  their  lives  in  the  hope  of  a  cure. 

The  boy  Van  Cleve  was  perhaps  eight  years  old  at 
the  time  of  his  Uncle  Lucas's  death.  He  remembered 
indistinctly  the  shock  of  the  tidings,  and  people  hurry 
ing  to  and  fro,  and  the  grewsome  black-clad  figures  of 
the  women  moving  about  the  house,  which  was  in  an 


20  VAN  CLEVE: 

appalling  darkness  with  all  the  blinds  down  at  broad 
midday,  and  a  wild  wailing  and  noise  going  on  inter 
minably  in  his  aunt's  room.  He  remembered  stand 
ing  on  a  chair  in  the  nursery  where  both  the  children 
had  been  incarcerated  and  peeping  through  a  crack 
between  the  closed  shutters  and  seeing  a  great  con 
course  of  carriages  in  the  street  and  persons  who  were 
evidently  attired  as  for  Sunday  entering  the  house  — 
all  of  which  reminding  him  of  certain  festivities  which 
he  had  also  witnessed  from  afar,  he  reported  to  the 
baby  Evelyn  that  there  was  a  " die-party"  in  progress 
and  remonstrated  with  the  horrified  nurse  for  not  let 
ting  them  both  go.  It  was  not  more  than  a  year  after 
this  that  Van  —  as  in  later  life  he  could  recall  clearly 
enough,  but  without  any  sentiment  whatever,  for  he 
was  not  a  youth  of  easy  emotions  —  found  himself 
being  gravely  taken  in  to  see  a  gaunt  man  with  a  flushed 
face  and  great  glassy  eyes,  who  lay  in  bed,  and  put  out 
one  fevered  claw  of  a  hand  and  held  the  little  boy  by 
the  shoulder,  and  told  him  feebly  to  be  a  good  boy  - 
to  be  good  to  Grandma  and  Aunt  Myra  and  little 
Evelyn,  and  take  care  of  them  —  would  he  do  that  ? 
Would  he  promise  to  do  that  ? 

"Yes,  sir.  All  right.  I  meant  to  anyhow,"  Van 
said  in  a  cheerful  and  practical  voice.  "When  I'm 
big  enough,"  he  added  prudently. 

"Do  you  know  who  I  am?"  the  other  asked. 

"No,"  said  the  boy,  who  was  of  an  honest  spirit. 

"He  was  only  four  when  you  went  West,  Harry," 
cried  out  his  grandmother,  anxiously;  "we've  talked 
about  you  —  we've  told  him  about  you  —  indeed  we 
have.  But  the  child's  too  little  —  he  can't  remember. 
It's  Papa,  Van,  you  know  Papa,  dearie?" 

"Never  mind.  When  I  get  well,  I'll  stay  at  home 
with  you,  and  we'll  get  to  knowing  each  other,  sonny," 
said  the  sick  man.  Van  Cleve  wondered  why  the  two 
women  hustled  him  out  of  the  room  so  quickly,  and 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  21 

cried    so   over   him   in   the   hall,   outside   the   closed 
door. 

There  followed  upon  this  sad  event  a  period  of 
journeyings  about  and  kaleidoscopic  changes  of  scene 
which  must  have  lasted  ten  years  and  upwards.  Soon 
after  Mr.  Kendrick's  death,  the  Van  Cleve  family 
sold  a  lot  they  owned  on  South  High  Street  in  the  capi 
tal  city  with  a  five-story  building  and  some  small 
stores  on  it  —  it  was  that  very  piece,  in  fact,  which  the 
Lewis  firm  of  attorneys  used  to  look  after  —  and  bought 
an  orange  grove  down  near  Palatka,  Florida,  wiiere 
they  all  emigrated,  and  lived  for  a  matter  of  eighteen 
months.  Little  Van  heard  a  great  deal  of  glowing 
talk  about  soil  and  climate  and  the  dignity  and  ease 
of  rural  life  upon  one's  own  "  broad  acres  beside  some 
clear,  sparkling  mountain  stream,  or  within  view  of  the 
majestic  ocean's  proudly  swelling  tide,"  to  quote  his 
Uncle  Stanton,  who  was  not  particularly  strong  on 
geography  —  or  not  nearly  so  strong  as  he  was  on 
rhetoric,  at  any  rate.  "Our  golden  orchards  will  yield 
us  golden  returns,"  the  Major  observed  poetically. 
Sad  to  relate,  nothing  of  the  kind  happened ;  or,  at 
least,  prosperity  such  as  Major  Stanton  indicated  was 
too  tardy  in  arriving  to  suit  these  speculators.  They 
returned,  denouncing  the  unfortunate  State  of  Florida 
high  and  low.  Climate  —  pooh !  It  was  as  cold  as 
Nova  Zembla,  with  no  furnaces  in  the  wretched  frame 
shanties  of  houses,  not  even  a  decent  fireplace.  Soil 
-  fiddle-de-dee  !  You  had  to  plough  and  weed  and  work 
like  a  slave,  or  nothing  would  grow.  The  orange  trees 
were  full  of  scale,  of  blight,  of  the  ten  plagues  of  Egypt 
—  you  couldn't  get  servants  for  love  nor  money  - 
it  was  three  miles  from  the  post-office  —  they  found 
a  snake  under  the  front  porch  —  !  "Of  course  a  man 
doesn't  mind  roughing  it  —  even  a  man  with  a  bullet 
in  him  that's  been  giving  him  occasional  pretty  severe 
reminders  of  its  presence  for  twenty  years,"  said  the 


22  VAN  CLEVE: 

Major  with  a  deprecating  smile;  "but  I  couldn't  ask 
the  ladies  to  put  up  with  the  hardships  of  that  life, 
though  they  spring  of  such  a  noble  old  pioneer  stock." 
To  their  surprise  and  consternation  and  great  wrath 
the  Van  Cleves  found  serious  trouble  in  disposing  of 
the  Palatka  grove  —  which  caused  the  ladies,  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  and  Mrs.  Lucas,  to  go  about  crying  out  with 
even  more  vehemence  against  the  folly  of  Florida  in 
vestments  !  One  can  scarcely  blame  them ;  they  re 
covered  only  a  lamentably  small  proportion  of  the 
money  they  had  put  into  this  venture.  The  last  of  the 
land  was  sold  for  taxes  ten  years  or  so  ago  to  a  man  who 
has  since  made  a  fortune  off  of  it  in  string-beans,  as 
I  understand. 

After  this  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  sold  the  big  old  Mansard- 
roof  home  for  twelve  thousand  dollars  (a  good  deal 
less  than  it  had  cost)  and  with  this  sum  bought  an  untold 
number  of  shares  in  the  Cincinnati,  Paducah  &  Wheel 
ing  Steam-Packet  Company,  which  had  been  a  flourish 
ing  concern  before  and  during  the  'sixties,  when  Joshua 
Van  Cleve  himself  had  for  a  while  been  interested  in  it ; 
he  sold  out  on  observing  the  increasing  activity  of 
railroad  traffic  in  this  section  of  the  country.  The  Ohio 
River  had  ceased  to  be  that  "  highway  of  commerce, 
of  wealth,  travel,  and  industry"  which  Stanton  called 
it,  by  the  time  the  widow  came  to  invest  in  the  C.  P.  & 
W.  Packet  Company,  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  was 
already  on  its  last  legs ;  and  shortly  thereafter  it 
tottered  over  altogether  —  the  steam-packets  figura 
tively  blew  up — went  to  pieces  —  sank,  carrying  along 
with  them  poor  Mrs.  Joshua's  twelve  thousand.  What 
with  receiverships,  injunctions,  suits  of  one  kind  and 
another,  the  echoes  of  the  catastrophe  lingered  in  our 
courts  for  years.  The  Van  Cleves,  however,  were  not 
among  the  litigants  ;  they  never  had  the  means  to  press 
their  claims,  even  had  it  been  worth  while. 

Perhaps  these  two  samples  of  the  Van  Cleve  style  of 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  23 

business  management  will  serve  to  justify  Judge  Lewis's 
pronouncements  on  the  family.  He  was  wrong  in  one 
particular;  they  never  did  "sell  something  and  go  to 
Europe"  ;  the  poor  things  were  not  knowingly  extrava 
gant  or  self-indulgent.  Rothschild,  Astor,  Shylock 
himself,  could  not  have  fixed  a  more  serious  eye  upon 
the  main  chance,  or  expected  a  dollar  to  go  farther. 
But  as  long  as  there  was  anything  left  to  buy  with, 
Mrs.  Van  Cleve  and  her  children  were  buying  and 
scheming  and  failing  and  selling  out  at  a  heart-rending 
sacrifice.  They  tried  oil  lands  in  Texas,  mica  mines  in 
Georgia,  granite  quarries  in  Maine,  lots  and  " corners" 
in  half  a  dozen  different  cities  —  there  was  nothing 
they  did  not  try.  Sometimes  they  went  and  lived  in 
the  locality  of  their  wild-goose  purchases ;  sometimes 
they  tried  to  direct  at  a  distance  —  in  either  case  with 
the  same  disastrous  results.  Conditions,  wherever  the 
Van  Cleves  went,  and  whatever  they  did,  were  some 
how  invariably  adverse ;  the  air  was  all  wrong,  the 
water  was  all  wrong,  the  society  was  all  wrong,  for  the 
older  members  of  the  family;  the  schools  were  all 
wrong  for  the  youngsters.  Circumstances,  in  short, 
contrived  always  to  be  so  overwhelmingly  wrong  after 
they  had  lived  in  one  place  for  six  months,  that  a 
change  was  imperative,  and  it  was  amazing  to  see  the 
confidence,  the  happy  expectation,  with  which  they 
looked  forward  to  the  next  move.  A  few  such  experi 
ences  would  have  made  pessimists  of  most  of  us. 

Master  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  therefore,  began  at  an 
unusually  early  age  to  see  the  world,  and  acquired  his 
education  in  an  extensive  variety  of  places  and  ways. 
They  were  in  Florida  when  he  learned  his  letters  and 
read  his  first  book,  " Robinson  Crusoe";  and  where, 
whatever  his  seniors  may  have  suffered,  Van,  for  his 
part,  had  a  happy  time  fishing  and  wading  and  play 
ing  in  the  sand  and  scrub,  and  getting  himself  infested 
with  "chiggers,"  to  the  fright  and  misery  of  the  rest  of 


24  VAN  CLEVE: 

the  family.  He  had  a  year  of  school  in  Pittsburgh 
(this  must  have  been  during  the  C.  P.  &  W.  episode) 
and  after  that  a  year  in  New  Orleans,  and  another 
year  divided  between  Boston  and  Bangor,  carrying  it 
off  pretty  well  as  a  scholar,  on  the  whole,  in  all  these 
places ;  he  was  not  a  dull  boy,  and  showed,  moreover, 
an  eminently  plain,  sane,  reliable  temperament.  His 
teachers  unanimously  reported  that  if  he  had  a  special 
turn,  it  was  for  figures  —  news  which  the  elder  Van 
Cleves  received  with  pride  and  gratification,  but  no 
surprise,  though  any  outsider  might  have  supposed  a 
taste  for  arithmetic  to  be  rather  unusual  with  them ; 
they  considered  it,  however,  an  outcropping  of  a  well- 
established  family  trait !  Some  of  Van's  other  char 
acteristics  were  not  so  familiar,  and  occasioned  the 
others  much  amazement  and  speculation.  Once  (when 
they  were  in  Baltimore,  when  the  boy  was  about 
eleven  years  old)  Major  Van  Cleve,  having  given  his 
nephew  an  odd  penny  or  two,  observed  with  a  humorous 
curiosity  that  the  young  gentleman  deposited  these 
coins  carefully  in  a  little  tin  bank  that  somebody  had 
presented  to  him,  the  key  whereof  he  carried  in  a 
pocket  of  his  small  breeches,  securing  his  property 
with  a  sedate  air  and  complete  absence  of  any  sort  of 
affectation. 

" What's  that  you're  doing,  Van?"   his  uncle  asked. 

" Putting  it  away,"  said  Van,  tranquilly,  looking 
about  for  his  cap  and  a  certain  new  baseball  bat  with 
which  he  proposed  to  try  conclusions  in  that  day's 
game  after  school  hours. 

11 Putting  it  away !  Don't  you  want  to  spend  it?" 
said  the  Major,  astounded  at  the  novelty  and  origi 
nality  of  this  conception. 

"No,  sir.  I've  got  some  money.  I've  got  a  dime. 
I  don't  need  any  more  right  now,"  Van  Cleve  explained ; 
and  perhaps  seeing  doubt  on  the  other's  face,  he  dug 
his  sturdy  little  grimy  fist  down  into  the  pocket  again, 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  25 

and  pulled  out  the  coin,   and  showed  it,  still  in  his 
matter-of-fact  style. 

"Do  you  put  all  your  money  away?"  his  uncle  in 
quired,  winking  over  the  boy's  head  at  the  grandmother 
and  aunt,  sitting  by  with  interested  looks ;  and  Mrs. 
Lucas  signalled  to  little  Evelyn,  who  was  playing  noisily 
with  her  dolls  in  the  corner  (she  was  a  noisy  and  rest 
less  child),  to  keep  quiet  so  that  they  could  hear  these 
revelations. 

"No,  sir,"  said  Van  again,  unembarrassed.  "I 
always  put  away  some,  though." 

"How  much  have  you  got?" 

Van  Cleve  considered,  wrinkling  his  brows.  "I 
don't  know  whether  it's  a  dollar-forty-five,  or  a  dollar- 
fifty-five,"  he  announced  at  length;  "I'd  have  to 
count  it.  But  I  guess  it's  only  a  dollar-forty-five,  be 
cause  it's  always  littler  than  you  think  it  is.  I  mean 
to  get  a  book  and  put  it  down,  so  I'll  always  know, 
without  having  to  count  every  time." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  it?  Aren't  you 
going  to  spend  it  sometime?" 

"I  don't  know  —  maybe.  Maybe  I'll  just  save  it," 
said  the  youngster,  beginning  to  fidget  a  little  under  the 
concentrated  attention  of  his  superiors. 

The  others  exchanged  a  glance  again.  "You  mustn't 
be  a  miser,  you  know,  Van  Cleve,"  said  his  Aunt  Myra 
in  her  clear  and  sweetly  dictatorial  voice ;  l '  misers  are 
horrid!"  And,  although  the  habit  of  saving  some  part 
of  one's  money  does  not  of  necessity  lead  to  miserliness 
according  to  most  persons'  view,  the  family  were  all 
more  or  less  relieved  when  later  on  Van  expended  almost 
his  whole  capital  on  an  outfit  of  second-hand  fishing 
tackle,  and  presently  had  nothing  left  to  show  for  it  - 
like  any  normal,  ordinary  boy. 

Yet,  as  young  Kendrick  grew  up,  amongst  other 
alien  and  puzzling  traits,  the  most  pronounced,  which 
he  every  now  and  then  displayed  anew,  was  this  same 


26  VAN   CLEVE: 

unaccountable  tendency  to  thrift.  The  lad  did  not, 
indeed,  seem  to  possess  much  aptitude  for  earning 
money ;  he  was  as  prone  to  absurd  planning  and  dream 
ing,  as  lazy  and  industrious  by  turns,  as  enthusiastic 
and  despondent  in  fits  and  starts,  as  the  average  boy ; 
and  played  and  studied  with  like  alternations  of  energy 
and  indifference.  "But  Van  Cleve  is  sure  always  to 
have  some  money.  He's  never  clean  out !"  the  Major 
used  to  remark  with  indulgent  laughter;  "and  he 
never  will  let  any  of  us  keep  it  or  take  care  of  it  for 
him.  No,  sir  !  Van's  his  own  banker.  He  reminds 
me  of  an  ancestor  of  ours  —  an  uncle  of  my  father's, 
in  fact,  who,  being  a  man  of  known  wealth,  was  advised 
by  Benjamin  Franklin  (an  intimate  friend)  to  put  his 
money  in  a  bank,  instead  of  keeping  it  in  hogsheads  of 
Spanish  gold  dollars  in  the  cellar,  which  was  the  old 
fellow's  habit.  'Some  day  they'll  murder  thee  for 
that  money,  Marcus,'  says  Franklin;  'thee  should 
put  it  into  a  bank.'  'Well,  when  I'm  dead,  I  shan't 
need  it,'  says  Uncle  Mark;  'and  I'd  as  lief  the  mur 
derers  had  it  as  the  bank  !  There's  small  choice  in 
rotten  apples' --ha,  ha!  Quaint  old  chap,  wasn't 
he?"  Major  Van  Cleve  would  finish,  looking  around 
upon  the  company  to  whom  he  had  retailed  this  anec 
dote  in  his  usual  pleasantly  dramatic  fashion.  Van 
Cleve  used  to  hang  his  head,  and  wriggle  on  his  seat, 
and  fiddle  with  his  big,  overgrown,  sunburned  hands, 
while  the  stories  were  going  forward.  He  had  heard 
about  Benjamin  Franklin  and  the  hogsheads  of  gold 
dollars  many  times  —  to  say  nothing  of  a  score  of 
other  yarns  the  Major  was  accustomed  to  tell.  Van 
thought  they  were  not  very  funny,  nor  very  bright ;  he 
did  not  believe  them;  he  did  not  see  how  anybody 
could  believe  them.  Between  family  loyalty  and  the 
dread  of  ridicule  he  writhed  in  the  depths  of  his  boyish 
soul,  and  wished  the  floor  would  open  and  let  him 
through.  Which  of  us  that  are  humane  and  have  been 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  27 

young  does  not  share  that  feeling?  Verily  I  think  I 
should  rather  make  a  fool  of  myself  (a  feat  which  I 
perform  with  facility  and  unconsciousness)  than  see  my 
brother  do  it ! 

Van  Cleve  had  reached  eighteen  when,  during  a  sum 
mer  spent  at  Put-in-Bay  on  Lake  Erie,  his  family 
became  acquainted  with  that  of  Professor  Samuel  Gil 
bert,  one  of  whose  household  made  his  bow  to  us  in 
the  last  chapter.  Mr.  Robert  Gilbert  was  near  Van 
Kendrick's  own  age,  and  they  speedily  contracted  one 
of  those  heroic,  splendidly  unselfish,  time-and-death- 
defying  friendships  into  which  young  gentlemen  at  this 
stage  sometimes  enter.  To  the  credit  of  mankind,  those 
friendships  do  often  endure,  and  there  is  nothing  more 
amiable  and  comforting  in  life  than  the  spectacle. 
Bless  me,  I  remember  seeing  these  two,  fifteen  years 
later,  when  they  were  grown  men  who  had  known 
cares  and  tragedy  and  bitter  hours  of  misunderstand 
ing  —  I  remember  seeing  them  engaged  in  an  informal 
game  of  ball  in  the  blazing  sun  at  some  picnic  or  club- 
outing,  and  —  "Say,  let  Van  have  a  bat,  you  fellows  ! 
He's  been  chasing  your  flys  out  there  in  the  scrub  for 
an  hour.  Let  Van  come  in  and  bat  once  !"  Bob  cried 
out  warmly  and  imperatively.  So  they  let  Van  come 
in  and  bat,  and  Bob  took  his  place  in  the  scrub,  and 
the  two  friends  merely  exchanged  a  nod  and  grin  as 
they  passed  each  other ;  they  would  have  been  as 
tonished  and  abashed  to  have  been  told  that  there  was 
anything  beautiful  in  the  incident,  yet  so  it  seemed  to 
one  onlooker,  at  least. 

It  was  after  that  long,  lovely  summer  season  of 
swimming  and  rowing  and  idling  about ;  and  reading 
"The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo,"  and  the  adventures  of 
Mr.  Huckleberry  Finn,  and  "The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp,"  and  sundry  other  gallant  classics ;  and  dream 
ing  glorious  dreams,  and  spinning  happy,  impossible 
futures  for  both  of  them  with  his  boy  companion,  that 


28  VAN   CLEVE: 

Van  Cleve,  upon  returning  home  (they  were  living  in 
St.  Louis  at  the  time),  announced  his  desire  to  go  to 
college  —  everybody  went  to  college  —  Bob  was  going 
to  college  —  Van  Cleve  would  go,  too  —  he  knew  he 
could  get  ready  —  maybe  he  would  be  conditioned,  as 
they  called  it,  but  he  would  get  in,  anyhow  —  he  was 
way  up  in  mathematics,  and  that  was  what  counted 
most,  Bob  said  —  and  he  could  make  up  the  languages 
and  the  —  the  other  things  easily,  oh,  easily.  Couldn't 
we  afford  it  ?  He  wanted  to  go  to  Bob's  college  - 
that  wasn't  a  very  expensive  place,  you  know.  The 
family  agreed  readily;  Major  Stanton  commended  his 
nephew's  ambition ;  they  were  all  very  proud  and  fond 
of  Van;  and  moreover,  by  a  neat  coincidence,  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  was  upon  the  point  of  selling  that  old  farm 
up  in  Union  County  that  they  had  owned  all  these 
years,  and  never  got  a  cent  out  of,  for  forty-five  hundred 
dollars,  part  of  which  money  could  not  be  better  em 
ployed  than  upon  her  grandson's  education.  It  was  all 
delightedly  settled  around  the  reading  lamp  in  the 
library  one  evening;  and  the  next  day,  Mrs.  Lucas 
hurried  down  town  to  secure  a  set  of  book  shelves  and 
a  wicker  lounge  she  had  noticed  in  one  of  the  shop 
windows,  which  would  be  just  the  thing  for  Van  Cleve's 
college  room. 

Well-a-day,  it  must  be  told  !  All  this  pretty  scheme 
came  to  naught.  Van  Cleve  did  not  go  to  college  that 
year,  nor  any  other  year;  he  never  lounged  on  the 
campus,  nor  cut  chapel  of  a  winter's  morning,  nor 
strummed  on  a  banjo  with  the  Glee  Club,  nor  shouted 
his  young  lungs  out  around  the  football  field,  nor  got 
his  degree  magna  cum  laude,  and  marched  down  from 
the  platform  with  the  tassel  of  his  mortar-board  over 
the  honorable  ear  that  signifies  graduation  and  the 
close  of  the  scholastic  career.  Without  any  of  these 
agreeable  preliminaries  and  with  a  sad  suddenness,  the 
young  fellow  came  to  the  sign-post  on  his  road  marked, 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  29 

"This  way  to  LIFE,"  and  if  he  did  not  reach  manhood 
in  a  night,  at  least  he  took  a  long  step  in  that  direction. 
That  wretched  old  Union  County  farm,  which  had 
always  been  a  nuisance,  now,  at  what  you  might  call 
its  final  hour,  when  it  was  as  good  as  sold,  and  every 
body  —  in  a  figure  of  speech  —  had  pen  in  hand  to 
sign  the  deeds,  all  at  once  developed  new  powers  of 
annoyance ;  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  the  minds 
of  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  and  her  daughter  it  took  on  a  malig 
nant,  a  diabolic  personality.  For  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  family  sales,  the  lawyers  on  the  other 
side  raised  some  objection  to  the  title.  The  title,  of  all 
things  !  "It  was  good  enough  for  my  husband,  and  it 
ought  to  be  good  enough  for  these  people/'  said  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  in  majestic  indignation;  "Mr.  Van  Cleve 
was  a  very  careful  man  —  a  remarkable  man ;  he 
never  would  have  bought  a  defective  title.  I  have 
managed  my  property  for  twenty-two  years,  and  I 
think  I  can  lay  claim  to  some  knowledge  of  business,  and 
I  never  had  a  title  disputed  before." 

But  it  appeared  that  the  attorneys  were  casting  no 
reflections  on  anybody's  integrity  or  abilities,  as  they 
respectfully  pointed  out.  They  had  wished  to  see  Mr. 
Van  Cleve's  will  —  a  not  unusual  request  —  and  accord 
ing  to  the  terms  of  it  they  were  inclined  to  the  opinion 
that,  etc.,  etc.  Mrs.  Helen  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  had 
died  in  February,  187-,  they  understood  —  yes  ?  —  and 
Mr.  Kendrick  at  such  and  such  a  date?  He  would 
have  had  no  more  than  a  one-third  interest,  at  any  rate, 
it  was  probable,  which  would  of  course  cease  and  deter 
mine  immediately  upon  his  death.  The  boy  was  still 
a  minor,  but,  etc.,  etc.  Their  civil  accuracy  frightened 
the  widow,  domineering  and  self-reliant  as  she  was; 
terrifying  doubts  of  her  own  position  for  the  first  time 
in  her  life  assailed  her.  Stanton  looked  profound,  but, 
understanding  absolutely  nothing  of  what  was  being 
said,  for  once  kept  silence.  He  had  no  stories  that 


30  VAN  CLEVE: 

would  fit  the  occasion.  Mrs.  Lucas,  with  not  much 
clearer  vision,  was  bewildered,  and  helplessly  angry. 
They  all  three  came  back  from  the  legal  offices  very 
much  excited  and  perturbed,  and  all  talking  at  once 
in  their  high-pitched,  vehement  way  which  would 
have  alarmed  any  one  but  Van  Cleve,  who  was  used 
to  it. 

"Pooh,  they  haven't  got  a  case  —  they  can't  do 
anything!  They  haven't  got  a  case,  I  tell  you!" 
cried  the  Major,  stroking  his  side- whiskers  with  large, 
contemptuous  gestures,  and  looking  very  fierce  and 
military;  " don't  be  alarmed,  Mother.  These  fellows 
are  mere  shysters." 

"Oh,  Stanton,  it  isn't  a  case  —  there  isn't  going  to 
be  any  lawsuit  —  can't  you  see? "  both  of  the  women 
wailed  in  concert ;  "they  don't  want  to  go  to  law  about 
anything  —  it  isn't  that,  at  all !  It's  just  that  we  didn't 
know  all  these  years  —  how  could  we,  when  nobody 
told  us  —  I  don't  see  why  they  didn't  find  it  out  before 
-  all  the  buying  and  selling  we've  done  !  —  maybe  it 
isn't  true  anyhow  -  "  they  questioned  each  other,  in  a 
frenzy  of  worry. 

"What  on  earth's  the  matter?  Can't  you  sell  the 
old  land?  Don't  they  want  to  buy  it  after  all?" 
asked  the  boy,  aroused  to  curiosity  at  last;  "won't 
somebody  else  buy  it  ?  What  on  earth's  up  ?" 

"Oh,  Van,  my  dear  boy,  I  —  I'm  afraid  we  oughtn't 
to  have  tried  to  sell  it  at  all  —  I'm  afraid  we  oughtn't 
ever  to  have  sold  anything  !"  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  began  ; 
and  fairly  burst  out  sobbing,  to  the  youth's  horror  and 
distress  as  she  put  her  arms  around  his  neck.  He  was 
growing  fast  this  last  year,  and  had  shot  up  to  be  a 
head  above  her ;  the  thought  that  he  was  almost  a 
man  in  some  indescribable  way  at  once  startled  and 
consoled  the  grandmother.  She  tried  to  explain 
brokenly  :  "The  lawyer  —  that  Mr.  Fogson,  you  know 
—  wanted  to  read  your  grandfather's  will,  and  he  said 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  31 

something  about  it  having  v- virtually  created  a  tr-trust 
for  you  —  for  your  mother's  share,  you  know,  my  dear 

-  poor  Nellie's  share  —  and  —  and  I  can't  understand 
it  —  I  don't  see  why  somebody  didn't  find  it  out  before 

-  but  I'm  af-fraid  we've  used  your  property  —  your 
money,  Van ;  I'm  afraid  we've  spent  what  you  ought 
to  have  h-had  !"     She  looked  into  the  boy's  face,  the 
tears  streaming  down  her  own.     Every  one  looked  at 
him ;   and  there  was  a  silence  in  the  room. 

"My  share?  My  mother's  share,  I  mean?"  said 
Van  Cleve,  perplexed,  but  not  much  upset  otherwise ; 
he  had  seen  the  family  get  into  states  of  excitement  such 
as  this  before,  over  matters  no  more  weighty  than 
dismissing  the  cook,  or  laying  a  new  carpet,  so  was  not 
disposed  to  take  it  very  seriously. 

"We  didn't  mean  to,  Van  —  we  didn't  know  we 
hadn't  any  right  to  it !"  cried  his  aunt,  hysterically. 

"Well,  how  about  Evelyn's?"  Van  inquired.  "Oh, 
I  see,"  he  added  quickly;  "Aunt  Myra's  being  alive 
makes  a  difference,  I  suppose.  Evelyn  couldn't  in 
herit  until  her  mother's  dead,  anyhow." 

' '  Van  Cleve !  How  can  you  ?  How  can  you  talk  about 
my  being  dead  that  way  ?  "  Mrs.  Lucas  almost  screamed  ; 
"don't  you  care  if  I  die?  Don't  you  care  if  I  die?" 
She,  too,  broke  into  tears  and  sobs  of  sheer  fright  at  the 
idea. 

"I  didn't  say  that!"  said  Van  Cleve,  helplessly; 
"I  only  wanted  to  get  the  straight  of  it,  Aunt  Myra. 
I  don't  want  you  to  die.  Nobody  wants  you  to  die." 

"We  didn't  mean  to  wrong  you,  Van,  my  dear, 
darling  boy.  You  know  I  love  you  like  a  mother, 
you  know  that,  don't  you?"  his  aunt  gasped  out  be 
tween  sobs;  "you've  had  just  as  much  good  out  of 
the  property  as  anybody  else,  anyhow.  We've  always 
shared  with  you,  haven't  we  ?  Oh,  say  you  forgive  us, 
say  you  forgive  us!"  She  cast  herself  on  him  with 
wild  prayers. 


32  VAN   CLEVE: 

"Well,  but  I  don't  know  what's  happened  yet - 
the  boy  began,  not  too  patiently. 

"Say  you  forgive  us!"  reiterated  Mrs.  Lucas  with 
prodigious  determination  in  the  midst  of  her  weeping. 

"Don't  get  so  excited,  Myra,"  Major  Stanton  re 
monstrated;  "you'll  hurt  yourself.  You  know  excite 
ment's  not  good  for  you.'7 

"I'm  not  excited  —  I'm  not  excited,"  retorted  the 
other  in  a  tearful  impatience.  She  attacked  her  nephew 
anew,  at  once  pleading  and  imperative.  "You  do 
forgive  us,  Van,  don't  you?" 

"All  right.  I  forgive  you  !"  said  Van  Cleve  shortly, 
coloring  at  the  words.  Anything  for  peace,  he  thought 
in  a  species  of  resigned  exasperation  —  and  then  won 
dered  guiltily  if  there  was  not  something  wrong  with 
him  morally  or  mentally  because  his  aunt's  behavior 
seemed  to  him  utterly  foolish.  He  reminded  him 
self  with  remorse  that  he  had  been  warned  repeatedly 
that  Aunt  Myra  was  very  delicate  and  high-strung; 
and  it  was  always  perilous  to  contradict  her.  Every 
body  in  the  family  was  more  or  less  delicate  and  high- 
strung,  for  that  matter ;  Van  had  even  heard  himself 
so  described,  although  he  was  uneasily  conscious  of 
being  all  the  while  in  absolutely  brutal  health  ! 

"I  guess  I'd  better  go  down  and  see  those  lawyers 
myself,  hadn't  I  ?"  he  suggested,  perceiving  that  it  was 
useless  to  expect  any  more  definite  information  from 
his  elders,  and  judiciously  selecting  a  moment  when  the 
scene  had  quieted  down  somewhat.  And  everybody 
agreeing  with  many  expressions  of  wonder  and  satis 
faction  at  the  maturity  of  his  judgment,  young  Ken- 
drick  did  go  down  on  the  morrow  and  interviewed 
Messrs.  Fogson  and  Dodd  —  not  the  true  names,  indeed, 
but  they  will  serve,  as  this  is  the  first  and  last  appear 
ance  of  that  legal  firm  in  this  history,  and  Van  never 
saw  them  again.  Both  attorneys  smiled  a  little  when 
the  young  fellow  recited  the  family  fears  that  he  had 
been  done  out  of  his  inheritance.  Mrs.  Van  Cleve, 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  33 

they  said,  had  not  precisely  understood  —  they  re 
gretted  exceedingly  to  have  given  her  a  false  impres 
sion  —  of  course  it  would  not  have  been  possible  for 
her  to  alienate  her  grandson's  property  —  anything 
like  real  estate,  that  is.  Nevertheless,  after  a  careful 
study  of  Mr.  Van  Cleve's  will,  they  thought  it  not  un 
likely  that  confusion  might  arise  at  some  future  time 
from  —  er  —  from  the  fact  that  his  daughter's,  Mrs. 
Kendrick's,  interest,  which  was  certainly  implied  if 
not  explicitly  stated,  had  been  apparently  overlooked, 
etc.,  etc.  They  had  no  trouble  with  the  boy ;  the  ques 
tions  he  asked  were  clear-headed  enough ;  and  he 
listened  to  their  explanations  with  more  understanding 
and  self-control  than  they  had  met  with  in  any  of  the 
older  members  of  the  family,  Messrs.  Fogson  and  Dodd 
remarked  to  each  other  with  some  amusement,  after 
Van  had  taken  his  leave.  He  himself  came  away  not 
greatly  cast  down  ;  he  walked  home  slowly  in  a  thought 
ful  mood,  and  as  he  went  up  the  steps  to  the  Van  Cleve 
front  door,  and  rang  the  bell,  decided  privately  that 
he  must  have  a  latch-key. 

His  grandmother  was  alone  in  the  sitting-room  with 
a  mass  of  documents  spread  out  before  her,  and  the 
little  old  wooden  strong-box  bound  and  fortified  at  its 
corners  with  brass,  with  "J.  Van  Cleve"  outlined  in 
brass  nails  on  the  lid,  in  which  her  husband  had  always 
kept  his  papers  standing  open  alongside.  She  looked 
up  at  the  lad,  troubled  and  apprehensive.  "Well, 
Van?"  she  said;  and  her  hands  trembled  slightly 
amongst  the  old  deeds  and  receipts  and  letters.  "I  — 
I  think  perhaps  you  ought  to  look  these  over.  You  — 
you're  getting  to  an  age  when  you  ought  really  to  know 
something  about  business  —  about  our  —  our  —  af 
fairs.  I  must  begin  and  teach  you." 

"Yes.  I  guess  it's  time  I  took  hold,"  said  Van  Cleve. 
He  came  and  stood  by  her,  smiling,  as  he  looked  down 
at  the  litter.  "I  used  to  think  all  the  money  came  out 
of  that  box,  when  I  was  a  boy,"  he  said. 


34  VAN   CLEVE: 

When  he  was  a  boy  !  That  was  only  yesterday,  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  thought,  with  a  strange  mixture  of  fear  and 
pride  and  pain.  Well,  and  why  should  he  not  be  grown 
-  be  a  man  ?  She  was  an  old  woman,  she  would  be 
seventy  her  next  birthday,  and  she  had  been  only 
fifty- two  when  this  grandson  was  born.  "What  did 
those  men  tell  you,  Van  Cleve?"  she  questioned  him 
jealously;  "what  have  they  been  saying  to  you? 
You  know  we  —  I  never  meant  to  use  any  money  of 
yours,  whatever  they  say." 

"Oh,  you  couldn't,  anyhow,"  said  the  young  fellow, 
practically;  "that's  safe  enough." 

"But  I  wouldn't  —  why  —  why,  I  wouldn't!"  his 
grandmother  cried  out,  grieved  and  indignant;  "I 
wouldn't  do  such  a  thing  — !"  she  broke  off  abruptly, 
aghast  at  the  sound  of  her  own  voice  raised  in  futile 
protestations  —  for  that  they  were  futile,  she  could 
read  in  the  kind  indifference  of  the  other's  young  face. 
She  recognized  in  a  sort  of  terror  the  same  feeling  that 
had  so  often  possessed  her  in  her  Joshua's  company ; 
she  remembered  Joshua's  harsh  tolerance,  his  half- 
answers,  even  that  gesture  of  putting  his  hand  in  his 
pocket  and  that  abstracted,  "Well,  how  much  d'ye 
want?"  which  was  many  times  the  only  notice  her 
attempts  at  conversation  got.  It  used  to  irritate  her 
so !  And  now  this  youngster  — !  Desperately  she 
made  an  effort  to  regain  their  familiar  footing.  "I 
suppose  we'd  —  we'd  better  not  talk  any  more  about 
college,  Van,"  she  said,  with  a  tightening  of  the  throat ; 
in  spite  of  her,  the  words  came  humbly.  "I  hate  to 
have  you  disappointed,  but  - 

He  was  not  listening  to  her  !  But,  at  her  second 
attempt,  he  roused  himself.  "Hey  ?  Oh,  college — yes, 
I  know,"  said  Van  Cleve,  and  patted  her  hand  sooth 
ingly.  "That's  all  right,  Grandma,  don't  worry  — 
it's  all  right.  I  haven't  got  any  time  for  college,  anyhow. 
I'm  going  to  work." 


CHAPTER  III 

SOME  FURTHER  RECOLLECTIONS 

LATTERLY  we  have  fallen  into  the  habit  of  saying  to 
one  another  that  the  city  is  getting  so  big  with  all  its 
near  and  far  suburbs,  and  the  distances  are  so  impossible 
(unless  one  has  a  motor),  and  there  are  so  many  new 
people,  and  everybody  has  so  much  to  do,  and  one  is 
constantly  meeting  at  clubs  and  parties,  anyhow  —  I  say 
we  have  got  into  a  way  of  telling  ourselves  that  for 
all  of  these  reasons  the  fashion  of  making  calls  is 
practically  obsolete.  But  at  the  date  when  the  Van 
Cleve  family  came  here  to  live,  this  efficient  catch 
word  had  not  yet  come  into  vogue ;  people  called  on 
them,  all  the  formalities  were  duly  observed,  and  they 
began  to  be  known  and  to  go  about  in  a  surprisingly 
short  time.  I  think  all  the  ladies  had  a  quite  unusual 
social  gift,  setting  aside  the  fact  that  they  were  well 
introduced  and  very  well  connected  —  the  Zanes  and 
Van  Cleves,  you  know.  Even  Major  Stan  ton,  for  all 
his  unreliable  reminiscences,  was  a  man  of  distin 
guished  presence,  and  good  manners,  —  an  agreeable 
enough  addition  to  most  companies.  Young  Kendrick 
was  the  only  unornamental  member  of  the  family,  and 
hardly  anybody  ever  saw  him ;  very  likely  he  was  grub 
bing  down  town  in  the  grimy  Third  Street  office  all 
day  and  coming  home  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening, 
tired  and  hungry  and  short-tempered,  hanging  on  a 
strap  in  the  trolley-car  along  with  the  rest  of  the  tired, 
the  hungry,  and  short-tempered.  A  shabby,  over 
grown,  and,  on  the  whole,  rather  sulky  and  silent  lout, 

35 


36  VAN  CLEVE: 

was  the  verdict  passed  upon  Mr.  Kendrick  by  most  of 
the  people  —  by  all  the  women,  in  fact  —  who  were 
privileged  to  meet  him  at  this  time.  As  to  the  gentle 
man's  opinion  of  them,  he  probably  never  took  the 
trouble  to  form  one ;  during  all  this  part  of  his  career, 
Van's  energies  were  strongly  concentrated  on  his  own 
affairs. 

But  the  ladies  !  I  remember  the  first  time  they 
appeared  at  Sunday  morning  service  at  All  Saints' 
in  our  suburban  parish  of  Elmhill,  where  they  had 
taken  a  house  somewhere  on  Summit  or  Riverview 
Avenue,  so  the  Gilberts  —  with  whom,  it  seemed,  they 
were  intimately  acquainted  —  had  told  me.  There 
was  a  tall,  fine-looking  old  lady,  Mrs.  Van  Cleve,  pre 
sumably,  with  an  erect  carriage,  dark  hair  thickly 
laced  with  silver,  brilliant  dark  eyes,  and  a  beautifully 
fresh  complexion  almost  like  a  girl's,  to  whom  the  Major 
—  correctly  frock-coated,  gloved,  and  high-hatted  this 
time  —  carefully  gave  an  arm  up  the  aisle ;  to  tell 
the  truth,  his  mother  looked  much  more  capable  of 
giving  an  arm  to  him,  and  indeed  of  generalling  the 
whole  congregation  and  church  to  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Babcock  himself,  for  all  her  seventy-odd  years  !  After 
her,  there  came  a  couple  of  much  younger  women  - 
Mrs.  and  Miss  Lucas,  as  it  developed  — -  both  of  them 
slender,  tall,  black-haired,  bright-colored,  repeating 
in  the  strangest  incisive  way  the  older  one's  effect  of 
personal  distinction.  They  were  quietly  dressed,  their 
entrance  was  as  unostentatious  as  any  lady's  should 
be;  and  we  ourselves  were  no  staring,  provincial- 
minded  audience;  but  had  they  been  preceded  by  a 
herald  and  trumpets,  they  could  scarcely  have  been 
more  impressive.  I  recognized  Van  Cleve  awkwardly 
bringing  up  the  rear;  but  nobody  else  noticed  him, 
even  when  he  stumbled  over  the  hassocks  in  their  pew, 
and  sat  down  with  undue  violence,  reddening  around 
to  the  back  of  his  neck.  He  was  figuratively  nowhere 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  37 

by  the  side  of  the  imposing  Major,  and  those  three 
torch-like  women. 

It  was  after  this  that  I  bethought  me,  not  without 
shame,  of  my  own  polite  duties,  —  six  weeks  must  have 
gone  by  since  that  meeting  at  the  Saint  Simon  !  — 
and  in  a  day  or  so  posted  over  to  the  Gilbert's  for 
Lome's  company  and  countenance,  in  a  call  upon  the 
Van  Cleve  household.  The  Gilberts  lived  on  Warwick 
Lane  in  a  weatherbeaten  old  house  —  their  means 
must  have  been  very  small ;  it  was  wonderful  the  way 
Lorrie  and  her  mother  managed  —  and  young  Mr. 
Robert  himself  opened  the  door  to  my  ring.  Instead 
of  bolting  off  incontinently,  as  heretofore,  at  sight  of 
the  petticoats,  he  grinned  and  said,  "Oh,  how  d'ye 
do?"  in  an  affable  and  unconstrained  manner;  and 
ushered  me  into  the  big,  battered  parlor,  explaining  that 
Lorrie  was  out  —  she  had  just  gone  over  to  see  one  of 
the  girls,  and  his  mother  busy  with  a  seamstress  up 
stairs,  but  if  I'd  wait  awhile,  they'd  both  be  here,  he 
thought.  And  he  hospitably  pulled  forward  an  arm 
chair,  and  offered  me  some  home-made  peach  cordial 
out  of  the  short,  squab,  cut-glass  decanter  that  Mrs. 
Gilbert  always  kept  —  she  was  a  Virginia  woman  - 
on  the  side-table  by  the  dining-room  door.  It  was 
pretty  strong,  high-flavored  stuff,  and  doubtless  there 
were  members  of  All  Saints'  congregation  who  would 
have  shaken  their  heads  at  the  spectacle  of  the  Pro 
fessor's  son  drinking  it,  and  at  my  countenancing  him. 

"Why,  it's  Summit  Avenue,  the  house  is  on  Summit 
Avenue,  Number  Eight  —  it's  one  of  these  two-houses- 
stuck-together  places,  under  one  roof,  you  know," 
he  explained  graphically,  in  answer  to  my  question; 
"you  can't  miss  it,  anyhow.  Isn't  it  funny,  every 
body  calls  'em  the  Van  Cleves,  and  yet  it's  just  the  old 
lady,  Van's  grandmother,  and  the  Major  that  are  named 
that.  There's  Mrs.  Lucas  besides,  she's  Van's  aunt, 
and  Evelyn,  she's  his  cousin  —  she's  about  seventeen, 


38  VAN  CLEVE: 

I  think,  and  Van's  own  name's  Kendrick,  you  know." 
He  went  on  with  some  further  details  about  the  family ; 
indeed,  it  was  from  young  Gilbert  that  I  learned  no 
small  part  of  that  Van  Cleve  history  which  has  already 
been  set  forth  herein.  Bob,  who  seemed  now  to  feel 
himself  on  intimate  terms  with  me,  displayed  a  re 
freshing  willingness  to  talk,  joke,  chatter,  tell  every 
thing  he  knew  in  the  obvious  desire  to  be  a  civil  and 
entertaining  host,  and  being,  moreover,  by  nature  —  as 
I  judged  him  —  open  and  talkative.  The  burden  of 
his  conversation  was  mostly  Van,  however  —  Van  this 
and  Van  that ;  he  told  me  all  about  their  association 
at  Put-in-Bay  two  or  three  summers  before ;  how  Van 
Cleve  had  wanted  to  go  to  college  with  him,  and  how 
something  had  happened,  Bob  didn't  know  what,  —  of 
course  Van  wouldn't  say  much,  —  but  his  friend  sus 
pected  the  funds  gave  out.  Anyhow,  Van  went  to 
work  —  got  a  job  in  a  shoe  factory  over  there  in  St. 
Louis  at  eight  dollars  a  week.  Didn't  I  think  that  was 
a  fine  thing  to  do?  Didn't  I  think  that  was  a  great 
thing  to  do?  Yet  Bob  was  sure  from  little  things  he 
saw  and  heard  when  he  was  with  them,  you  know, 
that  Van's  family  had  made  the  most  awful  fuss.  A 
shoe  factory  —  that's  what  got  'em  !  That's  what  they 
couldn't  stand.  As  if  that  made  any  difference ! 
It's  what  a  man  is  that  counts,  it's  not  what  he  does, 
isn't  that  so  ?  "I  mean,  as  long  as  he  does  something 
honest,  of  course,"  the  young  fellow  added  hastily, 
fearing  I  might  misunderstand  the  above  highly  orig 
inal  statement.  "I  think  Van's  pretty  big  —  he's 
the  biggest  man  I  know  !"  declared  Robert,  roundly,  his 
own  fair,  good-looking  face  flushed  with  enthusiasm  and 
a  little  with  the  peach-brandy,  no  doubt,  and  his  voice 
shaken  by  a  generous  excitement  and  pride.  "Give 
me  a  chance,  that's  all !  I'd  show  you  how  quick  I'd 
do  it!"  he  cried  bravely.  It  was  rather  foolish  and 
rather  touching. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  39 

He  went  on  without  much  prompting.  ' '  Hey  ?  Why, 
yes,  I  think  they  have  some  money  —  yes,  Van  as  much 
as  told  me  that  himself.  But  it's  not  enough  without 
him  working  —  Major  Van  Cleve  doesn't  do  a  thing, 
you  know.  Anyway,  Van  wants  his  own  money  - 
why,  any  man  does.  Van's  not  going  to  sit  around  and 
ask  his  grandmother  for  it  —  I  wouldn't,  either,"  said 
Robert,  loftily.  "Van  Cleve  just  kept  right  on  at  the 
shoe  factory,  and  let  'em  fuss.  He's  awfully  stern  and 
—  and  strong,  you  know,  when  he  wants  to  be."  How 
ever,  at  about  this  time,  it  seemed  they  had  moved  to 
Lexington,  and  Van  Cleve  went  right  off  and  found 
another  place  —  some  kind  of  a  place  where  he  did 
some  kind  of  office  work  in  one  of  the  Government 
bonded  warehouses  or  distilleries,  or  whatever  they  are, 
Bob  wasn't  quite  certain.  They  only  stayed  in  Lex 
ington  a  few  months ;  and  since  they  had  been  living 
here,  Van  Cleve  had  been  working  for  those  same 
people  Phil  Cortwright  was  with,  but  he  didn't  like  it 
-  he  was  going  to  leave  them  in  September.  No,  Bob 
didn't  know  what  it  was  that  Van  Cleve  disliked  about 
the  brokers'  office  or  business  —  he  wouldn't  be  likely 
to  tell  anybody,  even  Bob.  Van  wasn't  that  sort  — 
"He  says  I'm  a  regular  sieve,  anyhow  !"  Robert  con 
fessed,  with  a  laugh. 

"Has  he  got  something  else  to  do  ?" 

"Oh,  yes  !  Van  wouldn't  throw  up  any  job  unless 
he  was  sure  of  another.  He's  going  into  the  National 
Loan  and  Savings  —  Mr.  Gebhardt's  bank,  you  know. 
He'll  have  a  pretty  good  thing  there,  he  thinks,"  Bob 
said  with  a  large  air.  "At  least,  he  told  me  he  meant 
to  stick  this  time.  He  says  he's  chopped  and  changed 
around  enough  ;  he's  tired  of  it,  and  he's  getting  too  old. 
He's  right,  too  —  he'll  be  twenty-one  his  next  birth 
day.  Funny  thing  about  Van,  he  isn't  the  least  bit 
swell-headed,  you  know,  but  he  talks  about  sticking 
with  the  bank  just  as  if  nobody  else  had  any  say  about 


40  VAN  CLEVE: 

it  —  just  as  if  he  was  perfectly  dead  sure  of  making 
good.  And  he  will,  too,  you  see!"  said  the  friend, 
confidently. 

I  said  quite  truthfully  that  it  had  always  seemed  to 
me  a  formidable  sort  of  undertaking  to  go  and  offer 
one's  self  and  one's  services  to  anybody ;  that  I  won 
dered  how  any  man  could  ever  get  up  the  courage  to 
do  it.  Young  Mr.  Gilbert  heard  me  with  gravely 
smiling  tolerance. 

"Well,  of  course,  a  woman,  you  know  —  !  Now  be 
tween  men,  it's  so  different,"  he  spoke  with  the  wisdom 
of  the  ages.  "But  Van  Kendrick  —  why,  applying  for 
the  bank  job,  or  any  other  job,  wouldn't  worry  him 
any.  He  went  right  to  Mr.  Gebhardt.  Mr.  Gebhardt 
knows  his  people,  anyhow;  he  knows  Major  Van 
Cleve  -  "  and  here  Robert  stopped  short,  struck,  per 
haps,  by  a  certain  idea  of  which  he  may  have  seen  the 
reflection  in  my  own  face ;  for,  our  eyes  meeting,  he 
burst  into  a  sudden  guffaw  of  laughter.  I  am  afraid  I 
smiled,  too.  It  was  more  than  a  little  funny  to  think 
of  Mr.  Julius  Gebhardt  or  any  other  hard-headed 
business  man  being  favorably  influenced  by  knowing 
Major  Van  Cleve. 

"Has  he  been  to  see  you  yet?"   the  boy  asked. 

"Yes,  but  I  was  out.  I'm  going  to  call  on  the  ladies 
to-day.  I  thought  perhaps  your  sister  might  care  to 
go  with  me." 

"I'm  sure  she'd  like  to  very  much,"  said  Robert, 
gallantly.  "Lorrie  knows  them  pretty  well;  we  were 
all  summer  up  there  at  Put-in-Bay  together,  and  she 
used  to  do  fancy  work  with  them  and  the  rest  of  the 
ladies  on  the  porch  of  the  hotel;  Lorrie  and  Mother 
got  to  knowing  the  Van  Cleves  pretty  well,  lots  better 
than  I  do  —  excepting  Van,  of  course.  Lorrie  says  he 
isn't  a  bit  like  the  others.  I  don't  believe  he  is,  my 
self.  Seems  to  me  from  the  little  I've  seen  of  them 
(and  Lorrie  says  so,  too)  that  that  old  lady  Van  Cleve 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  41 

and  Mrs.  Lucas  and  Evelyn  are  all  of  them  the  kind 
that  get  up  and  run  around  in  circles  and  scream  if 
they  don't  get  their  own  way,  or  things  don't  go  to 
suit  them.  Van's  not  at  all  like  that.  And  the  Major 

"  he  checked  himself  again,  eying  me  with  a  dubious 
smile  that  presently  became  another  laugh.  "  That's 
all  bunk,  you  know,  those  stories  he  tells  —  you  knew 
that,  didn't  you?"  he  said  confidentially.  " Isn't  he 
the  prize  hot-air-distributor,  though?"  He  made  a 
metaphorical  gesture.  "Whoosh!  And  the  blow  it 
most  killed  father !  Van  knows  it,  of  course.  But 
nobody  can  say  anything  about  his  uncle  before  him 
-  not  much  !  He'd  take  your  head  off.  It  must  be 
pretty  hard  on  him  sometimes,  though." 

Mrs.  Gilbert's  entrance,  patting  her  hair  and  picking 
a  stray  thread  or  two  from  her  dress,  put  a  stop  to 
these  confidences.  Robert,  as  oft  happens  with  young 
people,  was  struck  into  dumbness  and  awkwardness 
again  by  the  parental  presence ;  and  sat  quite  silent 
and  self-conscious  until  the  end  of  the  visit.  "  Won't 
you  have  some  peach-brandy  ?  You  know  I'm  one  of 
those  amusing  creatures,  an  old-fashioned  housekeeper, 
and  I  love  to  inflict  my  home-made  stuff  on  people," 
said  Mrs.  Gilbert,  as  we  rose,  "Oh,  the  decanter's 
empty.  Mercy,  that's  not  at  all  like  old-fashioned 
housekeeping !" 

I  said  elegantly  that  I  thought  that  was  a  great  tes 
timonial  to  the  brandy,  and  as  I  had  had  a  taste,  I 
could  easily  understand  why  it  would  be  hard  to  keep 
the  decanter  filled  —  whereat  Mrs.  Gilbert,  who  was 
really  very  Virginian  in  her  ways,  at  once  announced 
and  insisted  on  it  that  she  was  going  to  give  me  some  - 
so  handsome  a  speech  must  be  recognized  —  now  don't 
say  a  word  —  she  always  had  plenty  —  a  two-  or  three- 
gallon  jug  every  fall ;  one  can't  have  a  little  of  a  thing 
like  that,  you  know ;  it  was  like  mincemeat  and  pre 
serves,  it  must  be  put  up  in  quantities  —  and  if  I  really 


42  VAN  CLEVE: 

and  truly  liked  it  —  ?  She  would  send  me  over  a 
bottle  that  very  evening  —  Robert  should  bring  it  - 
why,  dear  me,  it  was  no  trouble  at  all,  and  he  would 
be  only  too  glad,  etc.  —  all  the  way  to  the  front  door 
and  down  the  steps  !  I  thought,  nevertheless,  that  the 
young  gentleman  looked  rather  red  in  the  face  and 
confused  and  put  out,  at  being  assigned  this  butler's 
errand.  Mothers  never  will  realize  that  their  little 
boys  have  grown  up  !  And,  by  the  way,  Bob  did  not 
come  over  that  evening  with  the  peach-brandy,  and  I 
never  heard  another  word  about  it ;  so  maybe  it  had 
given  out,  after  all. 

Summit  Avenue,  where  the  Van  Cleves  had  estab 
lished  themselves,  was  in  those  days  a  quiet,  plain 
street  on  the  edge  of  one  of  our  most  fashionable  and 
expensive  suburbs,  and  quite  popular,  therefore,  with  us 
small  gentry.  The  row  of  brick  houses,  whereof  Num 
ber  Eight  was  one,  commanded  a  distant  and  narrow 
prospect  of  the  river  and  the  Kentucky  hills;  and  a 
fine,  large,  comprehensive  one  of  the  back-yards  and 
clothes-lines  of  various  aristocratic  residences  fronting 
on  the  main  street  near  by.  One  always  remarked 
upon  how  beautifully  the  So-and-Sos  kept  their  grounds 
when  one  called  on  some  Summit  Avenue  acquaint 
ance,  and  beheld,  as  not  infrequently  happened,  the 
So-and-Sos'  colored  man  washing  a  carriage  across  the 
way,  or  lounging  and  chatting  in  the  stable  door  with 
a  visiting  colored  gentleman  (temporarily  out  of  em 
ployment).  Number  Eight,  although  it  was  of  pre 
cisely  the  same  plan  and  architecture  as  its  neighbors 
on  either  hand,  still  contrived  to  appear  amongst  them 
with  a  certain  distinction,  acquired,  without  doubt,  from 
its  present  tenants  —  or  so  I  fancied.  The  whole  row 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  out  of  date  and  beginning  to 
be  wofully  shabby-genteel,  but  neither  of  those  terms 
could  be  applied  to  the  Van  Cleves,  and  their  home 
looked  like  them.  A  nice-looking  German  maid-of-all- 


HIS  FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  43 

work  let  me  into  the  long,  dark,  narrow  hall  whence  a 
long,  dark,  narrow  stairway  ascended  steeply  to  the 
floors  above.  In  the  parlor  there  were  charming 
cretonne  draperies,  cushions,  and  so  on  ;  and  chairs  and 
tables  which  one  might  guess  to  be  the  solemn  black 
walnut  of  a  few  years  earlier,  now  rendered  extraordi 
narily  seemly  and  sprightly  by  a  disguise  of  white 
enamel  paint ;  there  were  ivory-tinted  plaster  casts ; 
there  were  " Copley  Prints"  and  "Braun  Photographs" 
of  all  the  best-known  classics ;  there  were  smartly 
colored  posters  framed  in  passe-partout ;  and  there 
were,  besides,  all  over  the  delicate  green  walls,  a 
glorious  lot  of  water-color  sketches,  and  chalk  and 
crayon  representations  of  woodland  scenes,  old  mills, 
Italian-looking  boys  in  costume,  the  Venus  de  Milo, 
Phidias's  or  Somebody's  head  of  Jupiter,  and  other 
studies  of  antiquity ;  and,  at  my  elbow,  an  easel  with 
an  oil-painting  in  a  handsome  frame  of  a  brass  kettle, 
a  tumbler,  a  napkin  with  red  fringe,  and  a  plate  with  a 
banana  on  it  —  admirable  portraits,  all  of  them. 
These  trophies  recalled  a  rumor  that  one  of  the  ladies 
was  " artistic,"  the  youngest,  most  probably;  and  this 
was  presently  confirmed  by  Mrs.  Lucas  and  the  grand 
mother,  who  entered  restlessly  sparkling  with  a  kind 
of  overpowering  and  devastating  graciousness  of  wel 
come;  it  left  you  stunned,  tense,  with  the  sensation 
that  something  tremendous  had  happened  or  was  about 
to  happen  during  every  moment  of  your  stay  in  the 
house  ! 

"  Yes,  Evelyn  —  my  daughter  Evelyn  —  is  the  artist, 
or,  rather,  the  art  student.  She  is  studying  at  your 
Paradise  Park  Academy,"  Mrs.  Lucas  explained. 
"Oh,  thank  you  for  saying  that !  Of  course,  we  think 
she  has  talent.  Evelyn  is  very  temperamental,  all  her 
teachers  have  always  said,  and  temperament  is  invalu 
able!"  -and  in  the  middle  of  this,  the  young  lady 
herself  came  in,  from  an  outdoor  sketching  class  in  the 


44  VAN  CLEVE: 

Park  in  remarkably  neat  tramping  attire  with  a  trig 
little  folding  camp-stool,  portfolio,  and  artists'  et  ceteras 
under  her  arm.  More  superlatives,  more  graciousness, 
more  excitement !  They  were  indeed,  as  I  had  been 
warned,  as  different  as  possible  from  the  lank,  sandy- 
haired,  tongue-tied  youth  I  had  met  in  his  uncle's  com 
pany  and  seen  going  about  with  them,  later.  Young 
Kendrick  did  not  seem  at  all  vivacious  or  ready-witted ; 
he  was  a  little  slow,  if  anything ;  whereas  nobody  could 
have  been  quicker,  more  unsparingly  enthusiastic  and 
emphatic,  than  these  other  Van  Cleves.  They  were 
delighted  with  the  city,  the  street,  the  house,  the  people. 
Everybody  was  so  kind,  so  charming,  so  interesting,  so 
clever !  Wasn't  All  Saints'  an  attractive  church  ? 
Wasn't  Mr.  Bab  cock  a  wonderfully  gifted  man  for  the 
ministry  —  so  true,  so  eloquent,  so  sound!  Wasn't  Mrs. 
Gilbert  a  dear,  sweet  woman  ?  Wasn't  Lorrie  simply  a 
precious  girl  — ! 

"  Oh,  you're  sitting  in  a  draught  there ;  do  take  this 
chair  !  So  careless  of  me ;  I  didn't  notice  before ! " 
cried  Mrs.  Lucas,  interrupting  herself  with  startling 
suddenness  and  energy  in  the  midst  of  a  cataract 
of  exclamation  points ;  "  do  take  this  chair  !  I  know 
you're  not  comfortable  ! " 

"Why,  thank  you  —  I'm  all  right  —  there  isn't  any 
draught,  I  think  - 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know  there  is!  Do  take  this  chair  - 
you'll  be  quite  safe  here.  And  suppose  you  caught  cold  ! 
I'd  never  forgive  myself!"  says  Mrs.  Lucas,  tragedy 
in  her  voice.  All  at  once,  terror  quivered  in  the  air 
about  us ;  pneumonia  —  diphtheria  —  tuberculosis  — 
all  the  forms  of  death  from  taking  cold  menaced  me ; 
the  Grim  Reaper,  as  our  newspapers  love  to  call  him, 
was  flourishing  his  scythe  for  the  blow,  when  I  averted 
the  calamity  by  moving  to  the  other  chair!  Every 
body  breathed  freely  again  (I  trust),  at  least  until  the 
next  crisis,  which  occurred  when  the  maid  brought  in 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  45 

tea.  This  pretty  fashion  was  at  that  time,  twenty 
years  ago,  somewhat  novel  with  us ;  but  it  was  easy 
to  see  that  the  Van  Cleve  ladies  were  well  up  in  all  the 
latest  ideas ;  spirits  so  active  and  determined  as  theirs 
were  not  likely  to  let  anything  escape  them,  no  matter 
how  trivial. 

"You  take  sugar?"  Mrs.  Lucas  said  —  commanded 
would  be  the  better  word  —  clamping  me  firmly  with 
her  bright,  insistent  eyes ;  "you  take  sugar,  of  course  !" 

"No,  thank  you,  I- 

"Oh,  you  must  try  sugar!  This  tea  doesn't  taste 
nice  without  sugar,  and  I  do  so  want  you  to  have  a  nice 
cup  of  tea  !  Really,  you'll  take  sugar,  won't  you  ?  I 
know  you  won't  like  it  without  sugar  —  I  know  you 
won't !  Have  you  ever  tried  sugar  ?  You  ought  to, 
really  —  you  can  have  no  idea  how  it  improves  tea. 
Do  let  me  put  some  in  —  now  do  !  I  know  you'll  like  it 
with  sugar !" 

I  took  sugar;  and  tranquillity  was  restored.  That 
is,  Mrs.  Lucas  did  not  start  from  her  chair  and  begin 
to  "run  around  and  scream,"  which  at  one  moment  had 
seemed  imminent.  After  this  the  call  progressed  with 
out  any  more  sensational  incidents,  excepting,  perhaps, 
a  burst  of  alarm  from  Mrs.  Lucas  when  it  was  dis 
covered  that  Evelyn  had  gone  out  on  the  damp  grass 
of  the  Park  —  it  had  rained  twenty-four  hours  pre 
viously  —  without  any  overshoes  ( ! ! !),  and  the  depart 
ure  of  the  young  lady  upstairs  to  change  her  shoes  and 
stockings  immediately  ( \ ! !).  Miss  Lucas  did  not  go 
without  some  objections,  which  she  voiced  in  what  I 
took  to  be  the  temperamental  manner,  that  is,  with 
considerable  sharpness  and  stubbornness,  but  she 
yielded  at  last,  for  —  "Everybody  always  has  to  give 
in  to  Myra.  She's  a  natural  boss,"  said  the  Major  to 
me  with  an  indulgent  laugh.  He  arrived  on  the  scene 
while  the  amiable  little  contention  was  going  on. 

"Myra  is  really  not  at  all  strong  —  she's  very  high- 


46  VAN   CLEVE: 

strung  and  sensitive/'  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  also  explained 
aside ;  "  and  of  course  Evelyn  is  all  she  has  in  the  world, 
and  Evelyn  isn't  strong,  either,  so  they're  each  one  a 
constant  anxiety  to  the  other.  It's  nothing  but  affec 
tion  and  worry,  you  know,  but  it  sounds  so  much  like 
quarrelling,  I  sometimes  wonder  what  strangers  think 
of  it." 

"Oh,  I  hear  what  you're  saying,  Mother,"  said 
Mrs.  Lucas  from  behind  her  tea  things,  looking  up  with 
a  roguish  smile  that  was  very  attractive  and  disarm 
ing,  somehow.  She  addressed  me.  "  What  they  really 
think  is  that  Evelyn  has  been  terribly  spoiled,  whenever 
she  is  rebellious,  and  I  have  to  insist  with  her.  But 
you  know  how  it  is  with  young  people,  they  don't 
know  what's  best  for  them.  I  tell  Evelyn  and  Van 
Cleve  that  they  will  both  live  to  thank  me  for  making 
them  mind.  You've  met  Van  Cleve?  Isn't  he  the 
dearest,  noblest  boy?" 

"That  is,  of  course  we  think  so,"  put  in  the  grand 
mother;  suddenly  her  eyes  filled.  She  had  to  take  a 
quick  gulp  of  her  tea  to  keep  down  her  emotion. 

"Van  Cleve's  a  splendid  fellow,"  said  the  Major, 
emphatically,  setting  his  cup  on  the  table;  "an 
unusual  young  fellow,  madame.  Mr.  Gebhardt,  whom 
I've  no  doubt  you  know  —  I  mean  Mr.  Julius  Gebhardt 
the  banker,  your  most  prominent  citizen,  I  should 
judge  -  (and  it  is  impossible  to  give  any  idea 
in  writing  of  the  lusciousness  which  Major  Van  Cleve 
managed  to  impart  to  this  description)  —  "paid  Van 
what  we  consider  the  very  high  compliment  of  inviting 
him  to  accept  a  position  in  the  National  Loan  and 
Savings,  of  which  he  is  the  president,  as  you  know, 
of  course.  'Your  nephew  is  a  striking  example  of 
an  old  head  on  young  shoulders,  Major!'  Mr. 
Gebhardt  remarked  to  me  the  other  day.  Gebhardt 
is  himself  a  very  original  and  brilliant  man,  a  man  of 
enormous  character." 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  47 

"  That's  what  makes  us  sure  Van  Cleve  is  going  to  like 
it  at  the  bank  —  Mr.  Gebhardt  and  he  will  be  so  con 
genial,"  said  Mrs.  Lucas,  with  so  much  innocent  pride, 
one  could  not  find  it  in  one's  heart  to  laugh.  It  was  a 
chorus  of  absurdly  and  pathetically  extravagant  praise. 
Did  they  repeat  these  things  to  Van  Cleve' s  face  ?  It 
set  one  upon  the  thought,  what  kind  of  an  atmosphere 
was  this  for  a  young  man  to  live  and  grow  up  in  ?  The 
Kendrick  boy  looked  sensible,  and  all  that  I  had  heard 
about  him  so  far  sounded  sensible ;  but  it  would  need  a 
deal  of  intrinsic  force  in  any  character  to  weather  through 
these  alternate  gusts  of  hysterical  devotion  and  hys 
terical  tyranny,  and  keep  its  integrity  to  the  end.  It  so 
fell  out  that  coming  away,  about  a  square  from  the 
house,  I  encountered  Van  Cleve  himself,  striding  along 
home  in  the  late  afternoon,  and  whistling  sturdily. 
He  recognized  me,  and  stopped  and  took  off  his  hat  at 
my  salutation ;  and  spoke  with  a  very  nice  manner, 
about  which  it  struck  me  there  was  less  of  boyishness 
than  I  had  noticed  in  him  the  first  time  —  yet  that  was 
only  a  few  weeks  ago.  He  gallantly  turned  back  to 
escort  me  to  the  car ;  and  on  the  way,  Bob  Gilbert's 
name  having  come  up,  I  said  that  I  had  already  under 
stood  from  him  that  Mr.  Kendrick  was  about  to  make  a 
change  of  business. 

"Yes/'  said  Van  Cleve,  briefly.  He  was  not  nearly 
so  much  of  a  talker  as  the  other  boy.  Van,  on  his  side, 
had  no  idea  of  launching  into  talk  or  praise  of  his 
friend,  it  was  plain ;  and,  as  to  betraying  any  sort  of 
opinion  about  Steinberger  &  Hirsch,  or  brokers  in  gen 
eral  and  their  offices,  that  would  be  the  last  thing  in  the 
world  to  enter  young  Mr.  Kendrick's  head.  I  remem 
ber  saying  to  him  —  out  of  some  queer  impulse  to  ex 
periment  —  that  Mr.  Cortwright  was  a  very  nice  fellow 
to  be  associated  with  in  business?  And  "Yes?"  says 
Van  Cleve,  in  as  non-committal  a  voice  as  my  own,  and 
with  a  kind  of  polite  blankness  of  expression. 


48  VAN   CLEVE: 

As  we  waited  for  the  car,  there  came  walking  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street,  Miss  Lorrie  Gilbert,  in  pretty, 
fresh,  white  pique  skirts  crisp  and  cool  on  this  warm 
day,  with  a  straw  hat  with  roses  on  her  brown  head  and 
a  white  embroidered  parasol  (they  had  been  put  down 
to  one-ninety-eight,  and  I  had  seen  her  in  the  shop  the 
other  day  gleefully  buying  one  of  these  bargains  out  of 
her  little,  lean,  careful  purse)  whirling  and  twirling 
over  her  shoulder ;  Miss  Gilbert  came  walking  with 
some  other  girl,  and  they  both  nodded  and  waved  to  us 
pleasantly.  The  other  girl  I  saw  was  that  newcomer 
here,  that  Miss  Jameson,  who  could  be  recognized  from 
afar  by  her  bright  auburn  hair,  and  who  (as  the  young 
people  reported)  was  forever  attaching  herself  to  Lorrie, 
anyhow.  Van  Cleve  looked  after  them  with  an  interest 
showing  through  the  odd,  unyouthful  reserve  of  his 
face  which  I  fear  I  had  not  excited  —  alas  !  His  light, 
cool,  slate-gray  eyes  brightened  indefinably. 

"  Miss  Jameson's  a  very  pretty  girl,  isn't  she  ?  "  said  I, 
obligingly. 

He  started  faintly.  "Miss  Jameson ?  Oh,  yes,  she's 
awfully  pretty!"  he  said  with  almost  unnecessary 
heartiness ;  and  the  car  reaching  our  corner  at  that 
moment,  he  hustled  me  on  to  it,  and  scurried  off  after 
the  young  ladies,  quite  like  the  boy  he  really  was,  in 
spite  of  his  uncannily  mature  airs.  He  could  be  seen 
to  join  them,  out  of  breath  and  smiling,  and  jabbering 
fast  enough  now,  no  doubt ! 


CHAPTER  IV 
CONCERNING  THE  GILBERTS  AND  SOME  OTHERS 

PROFESSOR  SAMUEL  GILBERT'S  name  bore  after  it 
on  the  rolls  of  the  University  teaching  staff  a  handsome 
train  of  capital  letters  and  abbreviations  signifying  all 
sorts  of  honors  achieved  at,  or  conferred  by,  a  number  of 
similar  institutions  of  learning,  and  forming  a  set  of 
decorations  to  which  the  Professor  himself  was  never  by 
any  chance  known  to  refer.  He  was  a  plain  man.  He 
occupied  the  Chair  of  Dead  Languages;  and  might 
be  seen  any  morning,  even  the  rawest,  windiest,  and 
iciest,  trudging  off  in  the  direction  of  that  piece  of 
furniture,  to  his  class  rooms  in  the  University ;  plough 
ing  along  with  his  large,  square,  tired,  placidly  humorous 
face  set  towards  the  heights,  and  his  large,  square 
frame  clad  in  a  loose,  ill-fitting,  shabby  style  not  at  all 
in  accordance  with  the  dignity  of  his  position  and  titles. 
But  who  ever  heard  of  a  dapper  or  dressy  professor? 
Chairs  —  of  Dead  Languages  or  what-not  —  in  the 
colleges  of  this  land  of  wealth  and  freedom  are  not  noto 
riously  the  best-paid  of  offices ;  educators  as  well  as 
education  ought  to  come  cheap  from  our  splendidly 
democratic  point  of  view.  And  it  is  possible  that  Sam 
uel  Gilbert,  with  his  head  full  of  hard-won  Greek,  Latin, 
and  Sanskrit,  with  his  capital  letters  and  his  scholastic 
eminence,  walked  through  rain  and  shine  to  economize 
on  carfare,  and  slaved  away  the  long,  hot  days  of  sum 
mer  school  to  pay  last  winter's  coal  bill,  and  wore  his 
dingy  old  overcoat  and  those  monstrous,  clumsy  brogans 
which  furnished  his  classes  so  much  amusement,  be- 
E  49 


50  VAN   CLEVE: 

cause  he  could  not  very  often  afford  to  change  them. 
For  the  matter  of  that,  few  of  his  brother-professors 
were  in  much  better  case.  There  was  Weimer  (Meta 
physics),  who  kept  his  wife  and  two  children  in  Diissel- 
dorf  over  in  Germany,  on  half  of  what  it  would  have  cost 
him  here,  and  who  hoped,  by  saving  up  most  of  the 
other  half,  to  be  able  to  visit  them,  in  two  or  three 
years.  There  were  Burdette  (Political  Science)  and 
Stoller  (Mathematics),  lucky  bachelors  who  roomed 
together,  thereby  reducing  expenses  incredibly.  There 
was  Livingstone  (Chemistry),  engaged  for  the  last  twelve 
years,  and  waiting  till  he  should  get  up  to  a  salary  of 
two  thousand  for  the  wedding.  No,  Professor  Gilbert 
was  by  no  means  an  isolated  instance. 

As  to  Mrs.  and  Miss  Gilbert  they  were  a  mother  and 
daughter  of  a  type  much  more  familiar  among  our 
American  women  than  the  critics  would  have  us  believe 
-  active,  helpful,  and  good-tempered,  even  though 
they  had  to  trim  Mrs.  Gilbert's  bonnets,  and  make  over 
Lome's  party  dresses,  and  clean  their  own  gloves,  and 
go  on  foot  to  teas,  and  skimp  and  manage  daily  in  a 
thousand  ways  which  are  supposed  by  most  social 
observers  to  be  unknown  to,  or  disregarded  by,  our  en 
tire  feminine  population.  This  unfortunate  country 
is  wholly  given  over  to  a  set  of  idle,  pampered  females 
without  head  or  heart,  devoured  by  mean,  fashionable 
ambitions,  who  waste  their  time,  and  neglect  their 
homes,  and  ruin  their  husbands.  We  know  it  because 
we  read  it  in  every  novel,  we  see  it  on  every  stage,  we 
have  it  shouted  at  us  from  hundreds  of  pulpits,  amateur 
and  professional.  The  astonishing  thing  is  that  you 
and  I  don't  know  any  of  these  wretched  creatures,  as 
numerous  as  they  are  !  All  the  women  of  our  acquaint 
ance  are  good  wives,  sisters,  mothers,  daughters ;  if 
we  saw  one  that  had  ruined  her  husband,  we  would 
stare  as  at  the  dodo  !  And  unbelievable  as  it  sounds, 
we  are  certain  that  there  exists  a  very  large  section  of 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  51 

American  society  which  positively  doesn't  care  a  thing 
in  the  world  about  whether  its  members  are  rich  or 
poor,  or  how  or  where  they  live,  provided  it  finds  them 
upright  and  intelligent  and  well-bred  ! 

The  Gilberts,  of  course,  had  to  live  very  simply  and 
unfashionably  in  the  little  old  house  on  Warwick  Lane  ; 
but  this  fact  —  strangely  enough,  as  has  been  intimated 
-  did  not  appreciably  interfere  with  their  being  invited 
everywhere,  and  knowing  everybody.  The  winter 
Lorrie  was  nineteen,  for  instance,  the  first  winter  she 
was  "out,"  there  could  be  no  question  of  a  debutante 
ball  or  tea  or  dinner  dance,  such  as  the  other  girls  in  her 
set  were  treated  to,  as  an  introduction  to  society.  Nev 
ertheless,  Lorrie  went  "out";  she  poured  at  the  re 
ceptions,  she  danced  at  all  the  germans,  she  went  to 
the  Charity  Ball  for  the  Training-school  for  Nurses; 
she  was  seen  constantly  in  her  little,  cheap  frocks  — 
one  white  embroidered  net  worn  over  a  pink  or  blue 
China  silk  slip,  turn  about  —  amongst  all  the  gauze 
and  lace  and  satin  plumage,  apparently  having  as  good  a 
time  as  anybody,  with  her  pretty,  waving  brown  hair, 
and  her  bright  eyes  and  cheeks.  Sometimes  it  was 
Mrs.  Gilbert  chaperoning  her  daughter,  in  her  old  black 
grenadine  with  the  jet  passementerie  down  the  front ; 
sometimes  the  Professor  himself  might  be  noticed  wait 
ing  patiently  about  in  corners,  with  a  vague,  resigned 
look,  absently  polite  as  if  he  might  be  inwardly  con 
jugating  a  Semitic  verb  while  he  answered  your  remarks 
about  the  weather.  His  dress-coat  was  the  same  he 
had  worn  at  the  commencement  ball  when  he  graduated 
from  Dartborough  Institute,  Virginia  —  Samuel  Gil 
bert,  '68.  By  what  his  wife  regarded  as  a  special  dis 
pensation  of  Providence,  Samuel  never  outgrew  that 
coat ;  in  middle  life  he  retained  the  spare,  angular,  and 
bony  figure  of  his  youth. 

There  were  only  the  two  children  —  Lorrie,  who  was 
the  elder  by  a  year  and  a  half,  and  Robert.  Perhaps 


52  VAN   CLEVE: 

their  mother,  in  her  secret  heart,  considered  the  small- 
ness  of  the  family  another  dispensation.  Mrs.  Gilbert 
was  a  devout  Episcopalian,  and  would  have  taken  un 
complainingly  whatever  it  pleased  her  God  to  send; 
but  He  Himself  knew  that  their  income  had  always 
been  a  tight  fit,  and  was  getting  tighter  as  the 
cost  of  living  advanced,  and  the  children  grew  up. 
Lorrie,  indeed,  for  all  her  spirits  and  girlish  delight  in 
society,  and  that  spice  of  coquetry  from  which,  sad  to 
relate,  more  than  one  young  man  had  already  suffered  - 
Lorrie  was,  after  all,  a  generous,  right-minded  sort  of 
young  woman,  and  had  wanted  very  much  at  one  time 
to  study  shorthand  and  go  into  an  office,  by  way  of 
lightening  the  family  burdens.  It  was  a  sane  and  prac 
tical  idea;  but  the  Virginia-born  father  and  mother 
could  not  bring  themselves  to  accept  it  favorably  —  to 
accept  it  at  all.  Their  particular  generation  did  not 
easily  emancipate  itself  from  the  traditions  of  their 
particular  State.  Even  when  the  point  came  up  of  send 
ing  Bob  to  college,  which,  plan  as  economically  as  they 
might,  would  strain  them  to  the  last  notch,  Professor 
Gilbert  would  not  listen  to  his  daughter's  proposal. 

"  Robert  must  have  his  education.  But  better  let 
him  go  without  than  sacrifice  one  child  to  the  other,77 
said  the  father.  And  then  he  added,  unconsciously 
betraying  a  much  stronger  feeling,  "It's  a  poor  apology 
for  a  man  who  can't  take  enough  care  of  the  women  of 
his  family  to  keep  them  out  of  offices,  I  have  always 
thought." 

"Father,  you're  hopelessly  archaic,  and  antediluvian, 
and  behind  the  times,  and  out  of  date  ! "  said  Lorrie,  and 
laughed  and  kissed  him  bet  ween  her  adjectives.  "You're 
primeval,  and  Probably  Arboreal  - 

"father's  just  right! "  cried  Bob,  stoutly.  "It  would 
be  just  the  same  as  my  taking  your  money  that  you'd 
worked  hard  for,  and  going  off  to  have  a  good  time  with 
it,  Lorrie.  I  think  I  see  myself  !" 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  53 

"  You're  not  going  to  college  just  for  a  good  time, 
Robert;  remember  that!"  said  the  Professor,  a  little 
anxiously.  But  Bob,  who  was  always  prone  to  san 
guine  and  brilliant  dreaming,  had  already  begun  to 
explain  eagerly  what  he  meant  to  do. 

"  As  soon  as  I'm  through  —  it's  only  four  years,  any 
how  —  I'm  going  to  get  out  and  hustle,  you'll  see  !  I 
mean  to  make  money  —  I  mean  to  take  care  of  you  all. 
I  won't  have  Father  and  Lorrie  and  you,  Mums,  work 
ing  around  and  scratching  and  saving  the  way  you  do 
now.  You  just  wait !"  he  declaimed,  striding  up  and 
down,  with  sweeping  gestures,  his  hair  tumbled,  his 
young  face  aglow.  Mrs.  Gilbert  watched  him,  in 
finitely  proud  and  tender.  Of  course  he  was  very 
young  and  self-confident  and  •  boastful,  but  his  ideals 
were  high  —  they  were  clean,  they  were  true,  thought 
the  mother.  If  your  young  men  have  not  the  vision, 
the  country  perisheth;  but  her  Robert  had  it,  she 
was  sure. 

Professor  Gilbert,  on  the  other  hand,  lacking  the 
maternal  insight,  had  had  his  moments  of  doubt 
and  perplexity,  and  angrily  hushed  misgivings,  about 
his  son,  before  this ;  and  they  crowded  thickly  upon 
him  now.  The  college  they  had  selected  was  an  in 
genuous  coeducational  establishment  situated  on  a 
classically  named  body  of  water  not  far  from  a  simi 
larly  classically  named  town  in  the  State  of  New  York. 
Some  notion  that  the  youth  would  be  better  away  from 
home  during  this  part  of  his  schooling,  or  that  the 
foreign  atmosphere  would  have  a  stimulating  effect 
on  him,  moved  the  elder  Gilbert  to  send  Robert  these 
four  or  five  hundred  miles  instead  of  entering  him  at 
the  University  alongside  the  paternal  Chair.  Was  it 
possible  that  the  father,  in  his  heart,  feared  his  own  lack 
of  control  over  his  son,  or  his  too  easy  clemency  ? 
The  truth  is,  that  to  Samuel,  the  breath  of  whose  nostrils 
was  study,  labor,  the  conquest  of  difficulties,  Robert 


54  VAN  CLEVE: 

offered  a  painful  and  disheartening  enigma;  with  all 
his  experience  of  youth,  the  Professor  found  himself 
unable  to  solve  it.  Bob  was  not  a  dull  boy,  nor  a  bad 
boy,  nor  a  lazy  boy ;  he  was  simply  and  incurably  boy. 
He  could  have  yawned  his  head  off  over  the  Dead 
Languages ;  all  the  poetry  of  both  ancient  and  modern 
worlds  left  him  cold ;  he  cared  no  more  to  read  history 
than  to  read  his  mother's  cook-book;  he  kicked  his 
feet  and  stared  out  of  window  in  the  class  at  mathe 
matics.  With  all  this,  Robert,  to  the  slightly  bewildered 
relief  of  his  parents,  made  no  such  poor  appearance  in 
their  world,  being  not  in  the  least  uncouth,  nor,  on  the 
surface,  at  any  rate,  ignorant.  The  young  fellow  was 
ready  enough  in  talk,  gay,  mannerly,  and  agreeable ; 
nobody  ever  took  a  joke  better,  or  was  more  amiably 
amused  at  his  own  blunders.  " Never  mind,  Dad," 
he  used  to  say,  buoyantly,  throwing  an  arm  around 
his  father's  shoulders,  stooped  over  the  desk;  "I  can't 
construe  worth  a  cent,  and  if  a  hen-and-a-half  laid  an 
egg-and-a-half  in  a  day-and-a-half,  I  don't  know  what 
the  sum  would  be,  and  whether  old  King  Cole  signed 
the  Bill  of  Thingummys  in  the  year  Twelve  hundred- 
and-go-to-sleep  or  not,  you  can't  prove  it  by  me.  But 
never  mind  !  I'm  going  to  make  good,  anyhow.  I'm 
going  to  come  out  even.  You'll  see!"  And  after  a 
serious  lecture  from  the  Professor  —  to  which  the  lad 
always  listened  dutifully  and  respectfully  —  he  would 
go  off  to  skate,  to  play  ball,  to  lounge  and  read  a  novel, 
to  smoke  a  cigarette  and  try  a  game  of  pool  at  the  estab 
lishment  of  some  dubious  Mike  or  Pat  (alack  !  alas  !), 
to  join  some  party  of  young  people  at  the  Zoo,  or  the 
Canoe  Club  —  to  do  anything  under  the  shining  sun, 
except  his  work.  "I  can't  understand  it!"  Professor 
Gilbert  would  complain  to  his  wife  in  their  worried 
private  moments;  "Bob  looks  and  talks  like  a  gentle 
man's  son  —  I  never  caught  him  in  a  lie  in  my  life  — 
yet  he  doesn't  seem  to  have  the  faintest  idea  of  per- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  55 

sonal  responsibility.      And  he  can't  add,   and  spells 
'judgment'  with  an  e  !" 

By  what  despairing  labors,  or  what  shrinking  use  of 
his  own  name  and  influence,  the  elder  Gilbert  got  his 
son  through  the  entrance  examinations  at  Eureka 
College,  one  can  only  guess ;  possibly  the  standards 
of  that  institution  were  not  mercilessly  high.  Robert 
went  off  in  fine  feather ;  erelong  letters  came  back 
brimful  of  zest  for  the  new  life.  Such  fun  !  He  had 
been  initiated  into  the  B.  K.  E.  —  everybody  belonged 
to  a  fraternity,  you  know  —  you  had  to  belong  to  a 
fraternity  —  why,  if  you  didn't,  you  weren't  in  any 
thing,  and  couldn't  have  any  good  times  at  all.  He 
would  have  felt  awfully  if  he  hadn't  been  invited  to 
join ;  but  two  or  three  different  frats  had  come 
after  him.  It  sounded  big-headed  for  him  to  say 
that ;  but  you  couldn't  help  being  glad  the  fellows 
liked  you,  you  know.  He  liked  them  all ;  they  were 
splendid  fellows,  every  one  of  them.  He  was  learning 
to  box;  pretty  nearly  everybody  boxed  or  did  some 
kind  of  athletic  stunt ;  he  was  going  to  save  up  and  buy 
a  pair  of  boxing-gloves.  He  had  wanted  to  try  for 
the  team  —  the  track  team,  you  know  —  he  found 
he  wasn't  heavy  enough  for  foot-ball  or  the  crew;  he 
believed  he  would  go  in  for  the  short-distance,  say  the 
hundred-yard-dash,  or  perhaps  hurdles ;  several  of 
the  men  had  advised  him  to.  He  could  get  on  the  Glee 
or  Mandolin  Club,  too,  lots  of  the  fellows  had  told  him ; 
only  he  didn't  like  to  be  borrowing  some  other  fellow's 
banjo  all  the  time,  so  he  couldn't  get  very  much  practice, 
but  he  meant  to  save  up  and  buy  one  for  himself. 
"It  would  be  great  if  I  could  go  on  tour  with  the  club 
during  the  holidays,  wouldn't  it?"  he  wrote  excitedly. 
"They  have  the  time  of  their  lives.  Every  town  they 
go  to  there're  always  either  some  Eureka  men,  or  some 
belonging  to  the  same  frats,  and  they  can't  do  enough 
for  you.  It  looks  just  now  as  if  the  expense  would 


56  VAN  CLEVE: 

kind  of  oversize  me,  but  I  think  maybe  I  can  make  it 
yet,  by  saving  here  and  there  —  you  watch  little  Robbie, 
the  Wonder  of  Eureka  College,  in  his  Peerless  Per 
formance  of  Piling  up  the  Scads!"  .  .  .  " There's 
a  man  in  the  Glee  Club  that's  a  special  friend  of  mine, 
though  he's  a  good  deal  older,  about  twenty-four,  I 
think,  and  I'm  such  a  kid.  That's  what  they  all  call 
me,  you  know,  Kid  Gilbert.  I  think  I  told  you  about 
him  before ;  it's  Phil  Cortwright,  the  same  fellow  that 
was  so  nice  about  telling  me  about  rooms,  and  the  right 
sort  of  fellows  to  know,  and  all  that,  when  I  first  got 
here.  He  was  the  one  that  got  me  into  the  B.  K.  E. 
He  comes  from  Paris,  Kentucky,  and  I  believe  his  people 
are  in  the  whiskey  business,  or  race-horses,  but  you 
know  they  don't  think  anything  of  that  down  there  - 
I  mean  they  think  it's  all  right  and  perfectly  gentle 
manly.  Anyhow,  Phil's  a  cracker  jack  fellow,  and  if 
the  Glee  Club  comes  to  Cinti.,  I  want  to  make  it 
pleasant  for  him.  I'd  like  to  have  him  stay  at  the  house 
if  we  can.  It  won't  be  any  trouble,  you  know,  because 
we'll  be  out  all  the  time.  Tell  Lorrie  to  stir  up  the 
girls,  so  he'll  be  invited  places.  I  bet  they'll  all  like 
him;  Cort's  a  good  deal  of  a  fusser,  and  an  awfully 
clean-cut,  good-looking  fellow,  and  dances  like  a  dream, 
all  the  girls  here  say.  ..."  And  the  letter  ended 
with  dear  old  Dad  and  Mums,  he  wasn't  doing  any 
great  things  in  class,  just  sort  of  tailing  along  with  the 
rest,  but  don't  worry,  he'd  make  it  up  before  the  end 
of  the  year. 

"Stir  up  the  girls  !  Goodness,  they  don't  need  much 
stirring  up  about  a  man.  Everybody's  saying  there 
aren't  half  enough  men  to  go  around,  this  winter," 
Lorrie  commented,  on  hearing  her  brother's  commands  ; 
"  shoals  of  girls  coming  out  —  Leila  Dennison  and  I 
were  counting  up  the  other  day,  and  there're  eighteen. 
But  last  year  there  were  only  ten,  and  everywhere 
you  went  there  were  always  about  forty  girls  to  one 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  57 

man,  so  the  debutantes  don't  seem  to  make  much 
difference.  What's  Bob's  friend's  name?"  And  that 
afternoon  when  Mrs.  Gebhardt  and  Nathalie  called 
for  Lorrie,  in  the  elegant  Gebhardt  equipage,  bay 
horses,  dark  green  liveries,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  Mrs. 
Gilbert  overheard  Lorrie  as  she  put  on  her  things 
swiftly  expounding  to  the  other  girl,  perched  on  the 
bed:  ".  .  .  No,  he's  older  than  Bob.  I  like  the  men 
to  be  old,  don't  you  ?  Bob  seems  to  think  he's  awfully 
nice.  Maybe  some  of  the  girls  across  the  river  know 
him ;  anyhow,  he's  from  Kentucky  —  I'll  ask  some  of 
them.  Bob  says  he's  good-looking  —  but  you  can't 
tell,  men's  ideas  of  good-looking  are  so  funny.  And 
Bob  says  he's  a  —  wait  a  minute,  I'll  have  to  look  at 
the  letter  again  —  'Cort's  a  good  deal  of  a  fusser'  - 
do  you  suppose  that's  the  latest  for  spoony?  I'd  hate 
that!  .  .  .  Oh,  Nat,  isn't  this  fashion  of  separate 
waists  to  wear  with  a  black  skirt  the  grandest  thing 
that  ever  happened  ?  I've  made  up  all  of  my  old  stuff 
in  waists,  and  one  skirt  does  for  them  all !  Oh,  I  know 
it  doesn't  seem  so  wonderful  to  you,  but  7  can't  have 
tons  of  clothes,"  they  went  chattering  down  the  stairs. 

Perhaps  Robert  had  laid  out  his  plans  on  too  large 
a  scale,  or  had  not  had  leisure  enough  for  even  a  single 
one  of  the  things  he  meant  to  accomplish ;  at  any  rate, 
when  he  came  home  for  the  holidays  at  the  mid-year, 
he  was  not  yet  a  member  of  any  of  the  organizations 
for  which  he  had  proposed  to  qualify,  and  was  still 
occupying  the  not  at  all  exalted  position  in  class  which 
he  had  described.  After  all,  however,  —  as  the  young 
fellow  argued  good-naturedly,  —  there  was  plenty  of 
time;  Dad  knew  that  he  wasn't  any  highbrow,  Dad 
didn't  expect  himtos/mie;  he  would  come  out  about 
even  with  the  run  of  'em  in  the  end  ;  he  was  as  good  as 
the  average.  So  why  be  a  grind  ? 

Why,  indeed  ?    The  town  was  full  of  young  college 


58  VAN   CLEVE: 

men ;  you  saw  the  fresh  faces,  you  heard  the  rough 
music  of  the  boys'  voices  at  every  turn  —  goodly  sights 
and  sounds.  It  was  not  a  moment  for  sermonizing; 
everybody  wanted  them  to  have  a  good  time,  every 
body  was  bent  on  giving  them  a  good  time.  In  the 
middle  of  the  festivities,  the  Eureka  Mandolin  and  Glee 
Club  arrived  on  their  "tour"  -'Rah,  'rah,  'RAH! 
U-ree-KAH !  etc.  —  Bob  rushed  down  to  the  train 
and  bore  the  much-heralded  Cortwright  home  in 
triumph;  not  home  at  once,  to  be  sure,  for  they  had 
to  stop  at  "The  Mecca"  to  have  a  high-ball,  and  stop 
at  Smith's  to  pick  out  some  neckties,  and  stop  at  Andy's 
for  a  game  of  pool,  and  attend  to  a  dozen  and  one  mat 
ters  of  like  importance  before  finally  taking  the  Elm- 
hill  car.  It  was  a  cold  and  sunny  winter  day  at  about 
that  hour  of  the  afternoon  when  any  number  of 
carriages  were  hurrying  to  and  from  luncheons,  mat 
inee  parties,  receptions,  and  what-not.  They  sped 
by  with  clouds  of  picture  hats,  furs,  and  white  gloves, 
extraordinarily  warm-looking  and  radiant.  And  no 
doubt  it  secretly  pleased  Mr.  Robert  Gilbert  not  a 
little  as  the  two  young  men  strode  along,  to  be  con 
stantly  taking  off  his  hat  in  response  to  smiling  salutes 
from  all  these  rich  and  dainty  cargoes.  Rob  was  no 
snob,  but  hang  it,  a  man  can't  help  taking  a  pride  in 
his  own  people,  you  know,  and  he  liked  to  show  them 
off  to  Corty  !  The  latter  young  gentleman  preserved 
a  kind  of  appreciative  immobility;  he  was  twenty- 
four  and  a  man  of  the  world,  who  had  seen  something 
of  life,  and  —  ahem  !  —  of  women.  Nevertheless,  he 
was  not  above  glancing  into  a  mirror  in  the  drug-store 
window  as  they  passed  and  noting  anxiously  that  his 
overcoat  set  without  a  wrinkle.  He  was  tall,  slim, 
straight,  and  straight-featured,  a  satisfying  example  - 
according  to  his  own  ideas  —  of  the  type  that  a  certain 
eminent  artist  in  black-and-white  was  just  then  busily 
bringing  into  vogue. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  59 

" Hello,  there's  Lorrie  now!"  said  Bob,  suddenly. 
Another  carriage  had  gone  by.  Bob  looked  after  it. 
" Somebody's  taking  her  somewhere,"  he  said  ex 
planatorily;  "  Lome's  generally  on  the  dead  jump." 

They  resumed  their  walk.  ' l  The  one  with  the  auburn 
hair  —  is  that  your  sister  ?" 

"No  —  that  wasn't  Lorrie;  her  hair's  brown,  and 
she's  always  got  it  kind  of  loose  and  wavy.  Lorrie 
has  beautiful  hair.  No,  that  red-headed  one  is  a  Miss 
Jameson.  I  don't  know  whether  she's  come  here  to 
live,  or  only  visiting  one  of  the  girls.  You'll  meet  'em 
all  at  this  dinner  of  the  Gebhardts  to-night,  and  the 
other  places,  you  know." 

"Gebhardt?  That's  a  kind  of  German-sounding 
name.  You  have  lots  of  Germans  here,  haven't  you  ?" 
Cortwright  said  fastidiously. 

"Yes.  The  Gebhardts  are  American-born,  though; 
they're  just  as  American  as  you  or  I ;  Mr.  Gebhardt's 
at  the  head  of  a  bank  here.  They've  got  a  beautiful 
place  out  on  Adams  Road." 

"Money  to  burn,  I  suppose?" 

"Yes,  I  guess  so  —  oh,  of  course  they  must  have," 
said  Bob,  vaguely.  It  had  never  occurred  to  him  to 
notice ;  he  was  not  interested  in  the  Gebhardt's  finan 
cial  status,  nor,  in  fact,  in  anybody's.  Young  Cort 
wright  was  of  a  much  more  practical  turn ;  he  viewed 
with  a  more  or  less  appraising  eye  the  carriages  and 
girls  Bob  pointed  out  to  him,  and  the  handsome,  sober, 
rather  old-style  residences  which  at  that  date  decorated 
our  hilltop  suburbs.  "You  know  I'm  expecting  to 
go  into  business  here  or  in  Chicago  —  wherever  there's 
the  best  opening,  of  course,"  he  confided  sagely  to  his 
junior;  "but  wherever  it  is,  I'm  going  to  know  the 
moneyed  crowd,  you  bet.  It's  the  only  way  to  get 
along." 

"Well,  that  lets  me  out,  if  you  ever  settle  down  here. 
You  won't  know  me  /"  said  Bob,  with  his  ready  laugh. 


60  VAN  CLEVE: 

And  the  other,  after  an  instant  of  confusion,  laughed 
too,  and  clapped  him  a  staggering  blow  on  the  back. 
"You  are  a  kid,  Gil./'  he  said. 

This  last  conversation  took  place  in  Bob's  bedroom 
(the  one  at  the  back  over  the  kitchen,  a  shabby  and 
homely  little  room  like  all  the  rest  of  the  shabby, 
homely,  dignified  house)  while  they  were  dressing  for 
the  dinner;  and  as  Cortwright,  having  finished  first, 
went  downstairs,  he  repeated  to  himself  that  Gilbert 
was  a  kid,  but  a  good  sort  for  all  that,  and  a  regular 
little  Who's- Who-in-Society ;  anybody  could  see  the 
family  weren't  just  what  you'd  call  rolling  in  coin,  but 
that  didn't  count  so  much  after  all,  outside  of  New 
York ;  the  old  Professor  was  a  nice  old  mossback ;  and 
Bob's  mother  reminded  Philip  of  his  own,  who  had  died 
when  he  was  a  little  fellow  —  the  young  man,  for  all 
his  ingrained  worldliness,  thought  of  her  with  a  mo 
mentary  flush  of  sentiment  that  did  him  credit.  He  had 
not  yet  met  the  sister  that  the  Kid  was  always  bragging 
about  —  and  upon  this  Mr.  Cortwright,  straightening 
his  fine,  square  shoulders,  and  feeling  for  the  final  time 
to  see  that  his  white  tie  was  accurately  in  place,  passed 
into  the  living-room,  whence  he  had  already  heard  cer 
tain  girlish  sounds. 

A  young  lady  dressed,  or,  one  might  say,  overdressed, 
in  a  delicately  elaborate  evening  toilet  of  Nile  green 
chiffon,  covered  with  beaded  embroidery,  fairylike  lace 
festoons  and  knots  of  ribbons,  who  had  been  sitting 
in  the  low  chair  by  the  hearth,  jumped  up  with  a  faint 
scream  at  sight  of  him.  Never  was  fright  more  over 
whelming  —  considering  the  very  slight  occasion  for 
it  —  or  more  prettily  displayed.  She  clasped  her  slim 
hands  together,  and  gazed  at  him  with  wide  eyes  of  the 
most  beautiful  deep  and  clear  violet  blue  ever  seen. 
"Startled  fawn  style!"  said  Philip  to  himself,  know 
ingly;  he  had  not  gained  that  reputation  of  being  an 
expert  and  successful  "fusser"  without  practice. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  61 

"What  stunning  red  hair!  But  I  thought  Bob  said 
the  red-headed  one  wasn't  his  sister/'  went  through  his 
mind  as  he  delivered  a  glance  nicely  compounded  of 
admiration  and  apology,  and  began,  "Miss  Gilbert  —  ?  " 

"Oh,  no,  indeed,  I'm  not  Lorrie,"  interrupted  the  fawn, 
still  in  a  charming  flutter ;  she  dropped  her  eyes  before 
the  young  man's,  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  were  suffi 
ciently  bold,  and  fidgeted  with  her  frills  and  laces. 
"  I'm  —  it's  —  I'm  Miss  Jameson  —  I  came  over  to  go 
with  Lorrie  to-night,  you  know  —  I  didn't  expect  to 
see  any  strangers  - 

"You  didn't,  hey?  Come  off!"  thought  the  experi 
enced  Philip,  sceptically,  though  the  lovely  shell-pink 
of  her  cheeks  had  not  altered,  and  the  blue  eyes  were 
quite  childishly  candid  and  open  as  she  faced  him  with 
this  statement.  "I  startled  you  bolting  in  this  way? 
I'm  awfully  sorry,"  he  said,  and  once  more  allowed  his 
gaze  to  wander  appreciatively  over  her  —  a  gaze  which 
Miss  Jameson  apparently  did  not  in  the  least  resent, 
although  she  could  scarcely  fail  to  be  conscious  of  it. 
"I'll  have  to  introduce  myself,  if  you  don't  mind.  I'm 
Bob's  friend,  Cortwright  —  you  may  have  heard 
him- 

"Oh,  Mr.  Cortwright!  —  oh,  of  course!  Why,  I 
didn't  know  you  were  here  yet !  They  weren't  ex 
pecting  you  to-day,  were  they?  When  did  your  train 
get  in?"  And  with  these  guileless  inquiries,  Miss 
Jameson  reseated  herself,  turning  her  head  so  that  her 
profile,  exact  and  finished  as  a  cameo,  was  exhibited  to 
him  in  full  relief  against  the  dark  and  dingy  old  iron 
mantelpiece.  Cortwright,  who  himself  possessed  a 
good  figure  and  no  small  talent  for  posing,  forgot  all 
his  own  tactics  to  stare  at  her  unrestrained ;  he  had 
never  seen  so  entirely  pretty  a  woman.  No  wonder 
she  liked  to  show  herself  off,  he  thought ;  she  was 
pretty  all  over;  the  calculated  grace  of  her  attitude 
brought  out  sweet,  exquisite  curves  and  outlines  of  a 


62  VAN  CLEVE: 

yielding  suggestion  that  set  the  young  man's  senses 
tingling.  He  did  not  rebuke  himself,  not  being,  per 
haps,  particularly  conscientious  on  that  score,  and  feel 
ing,  moreover,  a  cynical  suspicion  that  she  was  fully 
aware  of  this  powerful  feminine  appeal  —  counted  con 
fidently  on  it  —  wielded  it  as  a  familiar  tool.  He  knew 
something  about  women,  and  he  had  met  her  sort  be 
fore  !  Their  eyes  met.  Cortwright,  with  a  spectacu 
lar  haste,  lowered  his  to  her  foot  —  an  enticing  foot 
in  a  high-heeled  satin  slipper  and  all  but  transparent 
Nile  green  stocking. 

' '  Why,  we  got  in  in  the  afternoon  —  a  little  late  on 
account  of  the  snow  in  the  mountains,  you  know,"  he 
said,  answering  her  last  remark  elaborately. 

"Oh." 

There  was  another  silence ;  then  another  interchange 
of  glances.  Cortwright  began  to  feel  uneasily  that  the 
scene  ran  some  risk  of  becoming  ridiculous.  She 
couldn't  expect  him  to  start  holding  hands,  or  teasing 
for  a  kiss  right  off  ?  That  would  be  a  bit  too  strong, 
although,  to  be  sure,  there  are  girls  —  but  not  in  a 
house  like  this  —  among  this  kind  of  people  — • 

"It's  awfully  cold,  isn't  it  ?"  said  Miss  Jameson. 

"Yes,  but  I  like  it,  don't  you  ?     So  bracing  ! " 

"Yes,  it  is  bracing."  Again  the  conversation  halted. 
The  young  lady  appeared  to  have  an  exceedingly  shal 
low  run  of  small  talk ;  yet  she  was  anything  but  bashful. 
She  wore  her  unusually  low-necked  ball  gown,  and 
languidly  uncovered  her  round,  tapering  ankles,  with 
an  air  of  complete  self-possession.  Cortwright  looked 
and  looked  with  a  kind  of  luxuriance.  "I  like  summer 
better  than  winter,"  said  Miss  Jameson,  playing  with 
an  elegant  trifle  of  a  fan  she  carried  on  a  slender  chain 
threaded  with  pearls  that  hung  and  swung  below  her 
knees.  "It's  so  much  warmer." 

"Gets  almost  too  hot,  though,  in  this  locality  some 
times." 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  63 

"Yes,  it  does,  doesn't  it  ?"  She  looked  at  him  under 
and  through  her  long,  thick  lashes  this  time ;  and  this 
time  Mr.  Philip  gazed  back  at  her  ardently,  not  think 
ing  it  worth  the  trouble  to  go  through  his  former 
pantomime.  This  was  what  she  was  after ;  and  he  had 
always  found  it  worked  well  to  meet  them  halfway,  he 
said  to  himself.  She  was  as  softly  accommodating 
as  a  cushion ;  and  it  sufficed  for  her  that  he  was  male. 
But  in  another  moment  this  most  promising  flirtation 
was  all  off  —  in  Philip's  own  phrase  —  because  Bob 
came  breezing  downstairs  into  the  parlor;  and  after 
him  Miss  Gilbert,  who  turned  out  to  be  no  such  beauty 
as  the  other  girl,  though  she  was  nice-looking  enough, 
and  who  gave  him  a  firm  little  hand,  and  looked  at  him 
out  of  a  pair  of  straight  and  steady  brown  eyes,  with  a 
frankness  and  simplicity  which  were  on  the  whole  rather 
refreshing. 

"  We're  so  glad  to  have  you  here,  Mr.  Cortwright. 
It's  so  nice  to  know  Bob's  friends,"  Lorrie  said  sincerely. 
"We  drove  past  you  and  Bob,  this  afternoon  —  did 
you  see  us?  There  wasn't  time  to  stop  and  speak," 
she  added  innocently.  And  Cortwright,  glancing  swiftly 
into  Miss  Jameson's  face,  experienced  a  not  unnatural 
glow  of  conceit,  as  he  knelt  down  to  put  on  the  latter 's 
furry  party  boots.  Well,  he  was  a  fine-looking  fellow ; 
she  wasn't  the  first  woman  that  had  found  it  out,  and 
made  an  opportunity  to  meet  him  ! 

Then  they  all  bundled  off  to  the  Gebhardts'  dinner 
dance,  and  the  ensuing  "whirl  of  gayety, "  as  the 
Society  Jottings  column  in  the  Sunday  supplement 
described  it.  There  were  so  many  girls  and  such 
pretty  ones,  and  so  much  good  eating  and  drinking,  and 
so  fine  a  dancing  floor  that  Cortwright  lost  sight  of 
Miss  Jameson  after  the  first  two-step.  He  hardly  had 
time  for  any  one  girl  in  particular.  At  this  party  and 
at  others,  to  Bob's  immense  pride  and  delight  (he  was 
so  unreservedly  proud  and  delighted,  in  fact,  that  the 


64  VAN   CLEVE: 

older  man  was  at  times  a  little  annoyed  and  almost 
made  ashamed  by  it),  Corty  made  a  highly  successful 
impression  in  their  society.  He  was  undeniably  hand 
some,  he  dressed  well,  he  could  talk,  he  could  dance, 
he  could  rattle  off  any  amount  of  ragtime  on  the  piano, 
and  whistle  and  sing  all  the  latest  "  coon  songs  "  and  airs 
from  the  popular  operas.  The  men  liked  him;  he 
spent  freely,  and  was  an  all-around  good  fellow,  they 
voted.  It  was  with  a  real  reluctance  that  the  young 
people  saw  him  go  when  his  time  was  up ;  and  his  last 
act  on  the  day  of  his  departure,  after  the  Wattersons' 
breakfast  at  the  Country  Club,  was  to  entertain  a  dozen 
or  so  of  his  youthful  hosts  and  hostesses  at  the  vaude 
ville  performance  they  were  having  that  winter  down  at 
the  old  Pickrell  Opera  House.  I  grieve  to  state  that 
the  party  under  Mr.  Cortwright's  leadership  behaved 
with  regrettable  indecorum,  notably  when  Mdlle. 
Patrice  came  on  for  her  serpentine  dance  and  the  cal 
cium-light  machine  in  the  gallery  threw  an  illuminated 
picture  of  the  United  States  flag  accompanied  by  the 
legend  La  Libertad  de  Cuba  all  over  her  and  her  gauze 
draperies  as  she  serpentined  about  the  stage,  a  spectacle 
they  singled  out  to  welcome  with  applause  fit  to  raise 
the  roof.  The  " Libertad"  of  this  island  was  some 
thing  everybody  was  hearing  a  good  deal  about  in  those 
days. 

Miss  Jameson  was  not  one  of  the  guests  on  this  occa 
sion  ;  as  it  happened,  Cortwright  had  seen  her  only  once 
or  twice  after  that  initial  party.  He  divined  that,  for 
some  reason,  she  was  not  always  welcome  everywhere  in 
Lome's  set,  but  was  far  too  wise  to  ask  why.  For  all 
that,  Philip  did  not  forget  her,  and  therefore  pricked 
his  ears  one  day  at  a  fragment  of  talk  concerning  the 
young  lady  between  Bob  and  his  sister.  "Say,  Lorrie, 
who  is  this  new  skirt,  anyhow  ?"  the  brother  demanded 
inelegantly;  "I  don't  remember  ever  to  have  met  her 
before,  and  yet  they  say  she  lives  here,  and  she  talks  as 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  65 

if  she  always  had.  You  know  who  I  mean  —  Miss 
Jameson  —  your  friend  Paula.  She  said  she  wouldn't 
mind  if  I  called  her  that  —  kind  of  floored  me  for  a 
minute.  I  hadn't  asked  to,  you  know.77 

11  Why,  yes,  you  do  know  her,  too,  Bob.  We  all  went 
to  kindergarten  together  to  Miss  Banning  when  we 
were  little  —  don't  you  remember  ?  You  ought  to 
know  Paula  Jameson  perfectly  well." 

"Well,  I  don't  —  hold  on  !  I  believe  I  do,  too.  She 
must  have  been  the  little  girl  with  the  flossy  sort  of 
clothes  that  always  had  whole  boxes  of  chewing-gum 
in  her  desk  —  oh,  yes,  I  know  now.  But  where's  she 
been  all  the  while  in  between  ?  Nobody  seems  to  know 
her  much  nowadays.  When  I  asked  some  of  the  girls 
the  other  day,  they  all  rather  sniffed,  and  said  she  was 
hanging  on  to  you,  and  trying  to  get  in.  Leila  said  : 
'Well,  if  I  was  Lorrie,  I'd  let  her  go.  If  a  girl  has 
lived  here  all  her  life,  and  by  the  time  she's  nineteen 
nobody  knows  her,  why,  there's  no  use  anybody  else 
trying  to  push  her.  That  kind  of  missionary  work 
doesn't  pay.'  Aren't  girls  just  the  sweetest  things  to 
each  other,  Cort?" 

"Oh,  don't  talk  like  that,  Bob/'  said  Lorrie,  a  little 
troubled ;  "Leila  doesn't  really  mean  all  that,  you  know. 
There's  nothing  the  matter  with  Paula,  only  —  well, 
her  mother  has  never  gone  out  here  and  doesn't  know 
many  people,  and  that  makes  it  hard  for  Paula,  you 
see.  And  then  living  in  hotels  and  boarding-houses  all 
the  time  must  be  horrid ;  nobody  lives  in  a  hotel,  here  — 
nobody.  I  think  poor  Paula  has  a  hard  time." 

"Why,  she  dresses  out  of  sight,  doesn't  she  ?  That's 
what  all  the  girls  say.  I  guess  she's  too  pretty  —  that's 
what's  the  matter,"  said  Robert,  shaking  his  head  pro 
foundly. 

uYou  know  better,  Bob  Gilbert  —  you're  just  teas 
ing - 

"Is  Miss  Jameson  so  pretty?"  said  Cortwright,  in  a 


66  VAN  CLEVE: 

tone  of  slight  surprise.  He  thought  it  diplomatic  never 
to  express  admiration  for  one  girl  to  another  girl.  "It 
seemed  to  me  she  lacked  animation  a  little.  Didn't 
talk  much,  you  know." 

"She  doesn't  need  to  talk  —  she  can  just  look"  said 
Bob.  "Why,  yes,  Cort,  she's  a  stunning  beauty. 
Funny  you  haven't  noticed  it.  Don't  I  tell  you  that's 
the  reason  all  the  girls  are  so  down  on  her?  Wow, 
look  out  for  Lorrie  !"  He  riotously  dodged  an  imagi 
nary  thunderbolt ;  and  Mrs.  Gilbert  came  mildly  in  to 
see  what  all  the  noise  was  about. 

The  visit,  the  holidays,  came  to  an  end ;  all  the  young 
people  vanished  in  a  twinkling,  Cinderella-fashion,  when 
the  tocsin  sounded ;  no  more  tearing  off  from  luncheon 
to  card-party,  from  card-party  to  dinner,  from  dinner 
to  cotillion,  no  more  coming  in  at  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  yawning  down  to  breakfast  at  noon. 
Bob's  father  and  mother  felt  with  a  formless  disquiet 
that  they  had  scarcely  seen  the  boy  at  all ;  there  had 
been  no  time  for  the  long,  intimate,  kind  talks  they 
had  planned,  not  one  quiet  evening,  not  one  meal  in 
private.  Perhaps  a  tear  or  two  fell  and  damaged 
Robert's  shirts  as  Mrs.  Gilbert  folded  them  into  the 
trunk ;  it  had  all  been  so  hurried  and  noisy  and  hilari 
ous  —  too  hilarious  that  night  while  that  young  Mr. 
Cortwright  was  here,  and  the  boys  had  come  home  at 
dawn,  and  the  cabman  came  up  the  steps  with  them, 
and  Samuel  himself  had  to  go  down  and  let  them  in  — 
the  mother  thought  of  that  night  with  shrinking.  Young 
men  must  be  young  men,  of  course,  but  —  she  got  up 
suddenly  from  the  midst  of  the  clothes  strewed  all 
about,  and  went  and  took  from  her  desk  a  tintype  of 
Robert  when  he  was  four  years  old,  in  his  first  funny 
little  breeches,  with  a  top  in  his  hand,  and  stood  looking 
at  it  a  long  while.  He  had  been  her  little  boy  then  - 
all  hers.  Mrs.  Gilbert  put  the  picture  down  with  a  sigh, 
and  went  back  to  her  packing. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  67 

Bob  did  actually  get  through  his  Freshman  year  and 
pass  the  examinations  without  serious  mishap,  somehow 
or  other ;  and  returned  to  Eureka  the  next  fall,  a  Sopho 
more,  as  exuberantly  sanguine  and  care-free  as  ever. 
His  letters,  which  were  not  so  regular  as  they  had  been, 
and  very  much  briefer,  now  began  to  be  filled  with  a 
disconcerting  variety  of  schemes  and  dreams  relating 
to  his  career  upon  leaving  college  —  vast  fortunes  he 
would  acquire  by  manoeuvres  based  upon  all  sorts  of 
airy  possibilities.  His  friend  Cortwright,  it  seemed,  had 
already  finished,  and  was  now  entering  upon  brokerage 
and  insurance  in  his  home  town.  Cort  was  a  fine  busi 
ness  man  —  splendid  —  a  hustler  —  always  right  on 
the  spot  —  and  such  a  good  sport,  too.  Bob  guessed 
he  was  making  a  lot  of  money ;  if  Dad  only  had  a  little 
loose  money,  Cort  could  double  it  for  him  on  the  stock 
market,  Bob  was  sure.  You  see  Corty  always  had 
inside  information,  that  made  it  perfectly  safe ;  and, 
besides,  he  was  pretty  sharp ;  it  took  somebody  pretty 
sharp.  Robert  didn't  believe  Phil  would  stay  in  Paris 
long ;  he  was  already  talking  of  moving  to  some  bigger 
place  and  maybe  would  come  to  Gin.  Wouldn't  that 
be  bully  !  There  was  more  in  the  same  strain  over 
which  the  parents  exchanged  worried  glances.  It  was 
different  from  all  that  wholesome  chatter  about  frats 
and  athletics  ;  the  boy  talked  too  much  about  money ; 
what  was  all  this  jargon  of  " fliers"  and  "sure  things"  ? 
And  as  for  classes  —  !  Professor  Gilbert  girded  himself 
up,  and  wrote  a  letter  sternly  reminding  Robert  of  his 
age,  his  duties,  the  value  of  his  time  and  education  ;  and 
suffered  tortures  of  anxiety  and  self-reproach  during 
the  weeks  that  went  by  before  any  answer  came.  ' '  Have 
I  hopelessly  antagonized  him?"  thought  poor  Samuel, 
wretchedly  ;  "  why  didn't  I  let  him  alone  ?  But  I  said 
nothing  but  what  I've  said  over  and  over  again,  and 
Bob  never  got  hurt,  or  angry,  or  sulky  at  it.  Something 
else  must  have  happened.  I  know  Bob's  all  right  — 


68  VAN   CLEVE: 

but  you  can't  tell  anything  about  boys."  Daily  and 
hourly  these  contradictory  formulas  chased  each  other 
through  the  unlucky  father's  mind ;  he  could  not  share 
this  trouble  with  his  wife ;  he  scarcely  dared  face  her 
across  the  table,  where  she  sat  with  eyes  as  clouded  as 
his  own.  How  many  fathers  and  mothers  have  known 
this  pitifully  small  tragedy  —  this  bootless  fright  and 
care  !  All  for  the  sake  of  some  selfish  lout  of  a  boy  who 
forgets  or  neglects  to  write  them  a  letter  now  and  then  ! 
-  as  superior-minded  or  childless  people  will  remark 
with  amusement  and  disdain. 

In  the  end,  Lorrie,  who  had  a  certain  affectionate 
understanding  of  her  brother's  character,  though  her 
own  was  so  different,  was  visited  by  an  intuition  on 
which  she  acted  in  her  usual  prompt  and  direct  fashion. 
11  Dearest  Bobs,  I'm  afraid  you  are  bothered  about  your 
allowance,"  she  wrote.  "I  don't  see  how  you  get 
along  on  it,  because  you  must  have  to  do  certain  things, 
you  can't  get  out  of  doing  them ;  and  you  haven't  got 
much  to  do  with.  I  should  think  even  with  the  greatest 
care,  you'd  get  behind  sometimes  ;  and  then  it's  always 
so  hard  to  get  straight  again  — "  and  so  on  without  a 
word  about  duty  and  ambition  and  self-sacrifice,  which 
indeed  were  subjects  Lorrie  would  have  considered  alto 
gether  too  lofty  for  her.  She  got  a  reply  by  return  post 
full  of  bad  spelling  and  contrition  and  confession  and 
promises  of  amendment  in  Bob's  big,  loose  scrawl,  the 
pages  decorated  with  one  or  two  blobs  and  smears  which 
looked  as  if  Master  Robert,  in  spite  of  his  sex  and  his 
twenty  years,  had  had  to  wipe  his  eyes  at  times  over  this 
composition.  The  lad  was  really  honest,  really  loving. 
Yes,  he  acknowledged,  he  had  "got  in  bad"  ;  he  couldn't 
tell  Dad ;  Dad  never  could  see  things  his  way.  But 
it  was  like  her  to  guess  it.  She  always  understood, 
somehow ;  there  wasn't  anybody  like  her  —  no  fellow 
ever  had  such  a  sister.  Would  she  tell  Dad  and  Mums 
for  him  now  ?  He  hoped  he  could  get  through  without 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  69 

asking  them  for  any  more  money ;  they  were  so  good, 
and  scraped  and  pinched  and  stinted  themselves  to  give 
him  what  they  did,  and  his  allowance  would  have  been 
plenty  enough  for  anybody  but  a  fool,  and  he  wasn't 
worth  what  they  did  for  him.  His  friend  Cortwright 
was  going  to  fix  up  some  kind  of  a  loan  for  him  (Phil 
was  in  that  business,  you  know),  get  him  some  money 
so  he  could  pay  the  fellows  and  the  other  people  he  owed, 
that  is ;  and  afterwards  Bob  could  pay  the  loan  off  by 
degrees,  and  he  guessed  it  would  be  all  right.  Cort 
wright  was  an  awfully  good  fellow.  But  Bob  couldn't 
make  the  exams  this  year  —  he  was  way  behind  - 
would  Lorrie  tell  Father  that,  too  ?  And  he  was  going 
to  take  a  brace  from  this  minute  right  on  —  he  wasn't 
going  to  have  anything  like  this  happen  again  —  just 
give  him  a  chance,  and  he'd  prove  it  —  he  was  going  to 
get  even,  you  see  ! 

It  is  a  sorry  task  to  write  or  read  of  these  years  of 
Robert's  —  a  sorry  and  a  wearisome  one  to  rehearse  the 
schedule  of  failure  and  disappointment  and  folly  —  let 
us  leave  it !  In  the  middle  of  his  third  term  (by  which 
time  Professor  Gilbert  was  perceptibly  grayer  and  more 
stooped,  and  his  wife  looked  ten  years  older)  the  young 
man  came  home.  One  of  the  first  persons  he  fell  in  with 
was  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  who  must  have  been  scrub 
bing  along  in  the  shoe  factory,  the  distillery,  Heaven 
knows  where,  all  this  while,  and  acquiring  experience 
of  a  very  different  order  from  Robert's.  Cortwright 
was  here,  too,  with  Steinberger  &  Hirsch  down  on  Third 
Street.  And  I  suppose  that  meeting  reported  in  the 
opening  chapter  must  have  taken  place  somewhere 
about  this  date  —  '92,  or  was  it  '93  ?  How  time  flies  ! 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  MAN  OF  THE  HOUSE 

MR.  GEBHARDT  of  the  National  Loan  and  Savings 
Bank  had  first  come  into  contact  with  the  Van  Cleve 
family  on  the  occasion  of  one  of  their  numerous  transfers 
of  property,  or  some  other  of  those  varied  financial 
operations  in  which  they  were  almost  constantly  engaged 
before  young  Kendrick  put  his  unwelcome  hand  to  the 
helm.  As  the  banker  was  a  busy  man,  daily  attending 
to  a  great  many  affairs  and  seeing  a  great  many  people, 
it  was  rather  odd  that  he  should  still  retain,  in  common 
with  everybody  else  who  had  ever  met  them,  a  distinct, 
even  vivid,  recollection  of  every  member  of  the  family ; 
but  so  he  did,  and  he  had  no  difficulty  in  "placing" 
Van  Cleve  when  the  latter  came  hunting  for  a  job.  The 
young  man,  who  made  this  move,  as  he  had  made  every 
other  that  directly  concerned  himself,  without  informing 
his  people,  much  less  consulting  them,  approached  Mr. 
Gebhardt  quite  unsupported.  It  would  not  have  oc 
curred  to  him  to  speak  of  his  family,  even  had  he  been 
aware  that  the  banker  knew  them,  or  anything  about 
them.  And  it  was  with  measurable  surprise  that,  upon 
giving  his  name,  he  observed  Mr.  Gebhardt  to  consider 
a  moment  and  then  heard  him  say:  " Van  Cleve? 
There  were  some  Van  Cleves  shareholders  in  the  old 
Cincinnati,  Paducah,  &  Wheeling  Packet  Company 
that  failed  here  about  ten  or  fifteen  years  ago.  I  re 
member  meeting  them  at  the  time  when  we  made  an 
effort  to  get  some  of  the  heaviest  owners  together  and 
see  what  could  be  done.  Any  relation  ?" 

70 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  71 

Van  explained. 

" Indeed,  you  don't  say  so?  Yes,  those  were  the 
people.  I  remember  them  all  very  well.  Your  grand 
mother  was  a  very  fine-looking  woman  at  that  time, 
Mr.  Kendrick.  Is  she  living  still?  Ah!  Your  uncle 
was  a  general  in  the  Confederate  army,  I  think.  No  ? 
Ah!  You're  all  living  here  now,  you  say?  Well,  now 
—  what  has  been  your  previous  business  experience,  I 
should  like  to  ask?"  And  a  few  days  thereafter,  Mr. 
Gebhardt,  happening  to  meet  Major  Van  Cleve  on  the 
street,  not  only  recognized  him  at  once,  but  stopped 
and  spoke  very  pleasantly,  referring  to  the  new  recruit 
at  the  National  Loan. 

"Ah,  yes,  so  I  understood  from  Van,"  said  Major 
Stanton,  affably,  nodding  at  the  other  with  a  humor 
ously  wry  smile.  He  spoke  confidentially.  "The  fact 
is,  Mr.  Gebhardt,  Van  Cleve  doesn't  really  need  to 
work.  We  wanted  him  to  go  to  college,  but  nothing 
would  satisfy  him  but  trying  a  business  career  first. 
It  distresses  the  ladies,  my  mother  and  sister,  a  good 
deal.  But  I  say  to  them :  t  Why,  it's  his  whim  —  for  the 
Lord's  sake  let  the  boy  try  it !  Most  people  would  be 
glad  to  see  a  young  man's  natural  wildness  take  this 
turn.  I  tell  you,  it  might  be  a  damn  sight  worse  ! ' ' 
Major  Van  Cleve  had  never  uttered  an  oath  in  his 
mother's  presence  in  his  life,  and  it  was  now  some  years 
since  the  family  resources  had  permitted  his  having  more 
than  a  couple  of  dollars  spending-money  in  his  pockets 
at  one  time  —  all  of  which  did  not  prevent  his  making 
these  statements  with  a  perfectly  clear  conscience. 
He  had  a  romantic  imagination,  and  the  priceless  gift 
of  believing  the  romances  he  imagined.  Mr.  Geb 
hardt,  if  he  felt  some  doubts,  was  still,  perhaps  uncon 
sciously,  impressed  by  the  fact  that  the  military  gentle 
man's  appearance  supported,  gave  a  sort  of  color  and 
atmosphere  to  his  large  talk ;  he  did  not  seem  to  be  in 
the  least  poor  or  pinched.  The  Van  Cleves  had  the 


72  VAN  CLEVE: 

secret  of  that ;  they  contrived,  on  next  to  nothing,  and 
almost  without  effort,  to  look  fashionable,  opulent,  and 
leisurely  —  all  excepting  Van  Cleve  himself. 

"Your  nephew  seemed  to  me  a  bright,  practical 
young  fellow/'  the  banker  remarked;  "he  gave  the 
impression  of  wanting  money  and  being  willing  to  work 
hard  for  it." 

"Oh,  yes,  yes,  that's  very  characteristic,"  said  Major 
Van  Cleve,  indulgently.  "Van  Cleve  reminds  me  con 
stantly  of  a  story  my  father  used  to  tell  which  he  had 
heard  from  his  father,  who  was  a  very  successful  attorney 
in  New  York  City  in  the  old  days,  seventy-five  years 
ago,  or  thereabout,  you  know.  He  went  out  one  morn 
ing  to  stick  up  a  sign  on  his  office  door-post,  'Boy 
Wanted.'  While  he  was  doing  it,  he  felt  a  tug  at  his 
coat  tails,  and,  turning  around,  here  was  a  ragged, 
barefoot  urchin  of  twelve  or  so.  'Please,  sir,  you  don't 
need  that  sign  no  more.'  '  Don't,  hey  ? '  says  my  grand 
father,  astonished,  'why,  I  want  a  boy!'  'No,  sir, 
you  don't,  not  no  more.  I'm  the  boy  ! '  Now  that  was 
exactly  like  Van  Cleve.  He'd  have  done  that  very 
thing.  And  that  boy,  Mr.  Gebhardt,"  the  Major  con 
cluded  with  suitable  weight  and  emphasis;  "that  boy 
was  John  Jacob  Astor  !"  Mr.  Gebhardt,  after  a  barely 
perceptible  pause,  received  the  anecdote  with  such 
cordial  appreciation  that  Stanton's  opinion  of  his  parts 
and  personality  rose  several  degrees. 

The  National  Loan  and  Savings  was  not  a  large 
institution,  though  reputed  very  solid.  It  was  housed 
in  an  old-fashioned  brick  building  on  one  of  the  streets 
up  towards  the  Canal,  amongst  similarly  plain,  worka 
day  surroundings ;  and  its  depositors,  as  Van  Cleve 
found  out  soon  after  his  entrance,  were  mostly  laboring 
folk.  They  came  in  there  in  streams  the  first  of  the 
month  and  on  Saturdays,  when  the  bank  was  kept  open 
till  nine  o'clock  at  night  to  accommodate  them  with 
their  pay  envelopes.  Van,  from  behind  the  brass 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  73 

netting  of  the  bookkeeper's  cage  in  the  rear,  could  see 
them  filing  up ;  and,  being  an  observant  youth,  before 
long  could  identify  them  all  —  young  women  stenog 
raphers  —  young  men  clerks  like  himself  —  market- 
gardeners —  master  carpenters  and  bricklayers  - 
thrifty  servant-girls  in  feathers  and  cheap  furs,  but  with 
always  a  fraction  of  the  week's  wages  in  their  showy 
imitation  leather  purses  —  nice  old  German  women 
with  black  shawls,  and  mysterious  little  black-lidded 
baskets,  and  clean,  brave  old  faces  under  their  bonnets 
of  black  straw  and  bugles  —  one  swarthy,  excitable 
man  who  used  to  come  with  a  small  boy  interpreter 
and  who  carried  a  greasy  bag  full  of  dimes,  nickels,  and 
pennies,  an  Italian  shoeblack  from  somewhere  down  at 
the  end  of  Sixth  Street,  as  Van  Cleve  learned.  The 
half-dozen  directors  themselves  were  drawn  from  these 
ranks  —  old  Mr.  Burgstaller,  the  retired  toy  merchant 
who  looked  like  Santa  Claus's  twin  brother  himself  - 
old  Mr.  O'Rourke,  now  also  retired,  but  who  had  for 
years  conducted  the  grain  and  feed  store  on  Wayland 
Street  opposite  the  market-house  —  these  were  of  them. 
They  all  had  such  an  air  of  age  and  experience  that  Van 
Cleve  might  have  lost  heart  to  observe  from  example 
how  long  was  the  way  he  had  to  travel ;  but  the  young 
man  was  not  of  that  temperament.  "  Lord,  if  I  thought 
I'd  have  to  wait  till  I  was  seventy  to  get  to  be  a  bank 
director,  I'd  quit  right  here!"  he  said  to  himself 
scornfully.  And  he  noticed  with  approval  that  the 
President  of  the  National  Loan  was  much  younger 
than  any  of  his  advisers  ;  Mr.  Gebhardt  could  not  have 
been  more  than  fifty. 

He  was  a  self-made  man,  and  as  such  commanded 
Mr.  Kendrick's  highest  respect ;  whether  he  altogether 
and  always  liked  his  employer,  the  young  fellow  was 
not  quite  certain ;  Van  was  slow  to  form  a  liking  for 
anybody.  "Mr.  Gebhardt  is  all  right  —  only  I  don't 
know  that  I  much  fancy  all  that  glad-hand  business," 


74  VAN   CLEVE: 

he  would  reflect  when,  as  sometimes  happened,  he  saw 
the  President  come  forth  and  circulate  among  his  de 
positors,  let  us  say,  on  one  of  those  busy  and  crowded 
Saturdays,  in  a  genial,  informal  way,  conversing  with 
many  of  them  in  the  tongue  of  the  Fatherland,  and  dis 
playing  a  hearty  personal  interest,  which  Van  Cleve, 
for  the  soul  of  him,  could  not  believe  to  be  always  very 
deep  or  very  sincere.  Van  himself  was  frankly  en 
grossed  in  his  own  business ;  he  could  not  understand 
how  any  man  could  waste  time  on  another  man's 
concerns  unless  they  were  intimately  connected  with 
his  own;  and  rather  than  look  upon  Mr.  Gebhardt's 
attitude  as  sheer  altruism  —  something  in  the  com 
mercial  world  to  be  at  once  laughed  at  and  distrusted  - 
Van  Cleve  chose  to  call  it  a  piece  of  policy.  "  After 
all,  he's  got  to  stand  in  with  these  people.  Their  little 
dabs  of  money  are  what  he's  founded  his  bank  on.  He 
knows  more  about  getting  along  with  'em  than  I  do; 
and  being  a  good  mixer  is  a  kind  of  an  asset  in  this 
business,"  he  would  argue  to  himself  shrewdly.  How 
ever,  Van  did  not  make  the  mistake,  as  might  have  been 
expected,  of  attempting  to  be  a  "good  mixer"  himself; 
he  knew  that  he  had  no  talent  that  way.  Like  many 
another  boy  of  his  years,  he  was  the  queerest  mixture 
conceivable  of  youthful  egotism,  pride,  ambition,  com 
mon-sense,  absurd  cynicism,  and  real  sentiment. 

Mr.  Gebhardt,  on  his  side,  extended  that  paternal 
sympathy  of  his  to  Van  Cleve  the  same  as  to  the  others, 
whether  influenced  or  not  by  the  fact  that  the  young 
man  undeniably  did  do  the  work  assigned  him  remark 
ably  well,  and  exhibited  in  all  things  an  iron  integrity. 
There  were  no  sons  in  the  Gebhardt  household,  only  a 
tribe  of  pretty,  fair-haired  girls,  with  a  pretty,  fair- 
haired  mother  looking  like  a  sister  to  the  rest,  who  used 
to  come  down  to  the  bank  in  any  one  of  several  hand 
some  family  vehicles  with  their  dashing  team  of  bays, 
and  carry  the  father  off  in  a  whirlwind  of  chattering 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  75 

and  laughter  and  caresses.  Van  Cleve  had  met  them  — 
indeed,  Mrs.  Gebhardt  and  Natalie,  who  was  the  oldest, 
and  the  only  one  "out,"  had  a  calling  acquaintance 
with  the  ladies  of  Van's  family ;  but  as  Mr.  Kendrick 
took  not  the  slightest  interest  in  young  women  and  never 
put  himself  out  for  anything  but  the  most  perfunctory 
civilities,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  should  recipro 
cate  whole-heartedly.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  quite 
enthusiastic  about  Bob  Gilbert.  Robert  and  his  friend 
met  nowadays  not  infrequently  in  a  business  way ; 
and  Mr.  Gebhardt,  having  come  across  the  Professor's 
son  once  or  twice,  had  the  curiosity  to  ask  somebody 
what  that  young  Gilbert  was  doing?  The  man  he  in 
quired  of,  who  happened  to  be  Mr.  Max  Steinberger, 
laughed. 

" Looks  like  I  ought  to  know,"  he  said;  "why,  he's 
with  us.  He's  got  the  job  young  Van  Cleve  —  no, 
that's  not  his  name  —  I  mean  the  young  fellow  you 
took  on  up  at  your  over-the-Rhine  dollar-shop  —  we've 
got  Gilbert  in  his  place." 

"Is  he  any  good?" 

"Good  enough.     How's  yours ? " 

Gebhardt,  who  was  never  known  to  utter  an  unkind 
or  uncharitable  criticism  of  any  one,  commended  Van 
Cleve  warmly.  "You  did  a  little  better  on  the  deal 
than  Leo  and  myself,  I  guess,"  said  the  other,  hearing 
him.  And  they  fell  to  talking  about  the  proposed 
bond  issue  and  promptly  forgot  both  boys.  But  one 
day  a  while  later,  Mr.  Gebhardt  took  occasion  to  ask 
his  junior  bookkeeper  what  was  the  real  reason  he 
had  wanted  to  leave  the  brokers. 

"I  somehow  suspected  at  the  time  that  you  weren't 
dissatisfied  wholly  on  account  of  the  salary,"  he 
said. 

"Well,  Mr.  Gebhardt,  I  thought  I  was  worth  more," 
said  Van,  obstinately  reticent.  Then  he  looked  up 
and,  meeting  his  employer's  eye,  thawed  a  little.  "No, 


76  VAN   CLEVE: 

I  didn't  like  it,"  he  confessed.  "Too  much  spend  and 
too  much  souse/'  said  he,  succinctly. 

"What,  Steinberger  and  Leo  Hirsch?  Why,  I'm 
surprised  to  hear  you  say  that !  I  had  no  idea  — 

"I  mean  the  —  the  office  force  —  the  office  in  general," 
Van  Cleve  explained  hastily  and  not  too  clearly;  "I 
don't  mean  Mr.  Steinberger  or  Mr.  Hirsch  themselves. 
They've  got  the  money  to  play  the  races  and  all  the 
rest  of  it,  all  they  choose,  as  far  as  that  goes.  And 
of  course  they  both  take  a  drink  now  and  then ;  but  I 
wasn't  talking  about  them.  They're  Germans,  anyhow, 
and  could  hold  a  barrel,  either  one  of  'em,  without  its 
phasing  them  -  '  and  at  this  point  Mr.  Kendrick, 
abruptly  remembering  the  nationality  of  the  gentleman 
he  was  addressing,  halted  in  a  fine  beet-red  confusion. 
But  Gebhardt  only  laughed ;  he  liked  —  or  seemed  to 
like  —  the  young  man's  bluntness. 

All  this  while,  how  were  his  elders  supporting  Van's 
persistent  "whim"  of  making  his  own  living  and  in 
cidentally  a  not  inconsiderable  part  of  theirs,  to  which 
they  had  yielded  so  painfully  in  the  first  place  ?  Why, 
they  were  supporting  it  with  the  most  astonishing 
patience  !  They  had  resigned  themselves  to  the  fact 
that  this  world  belongs  to  the  young  people.  Nobody, 
at  least,  will  dispute  the  truth  of  that  axiom  who  has 
lived  to  the  middle  years  or  a  little  beyond,  and  of  a 
sudden  found  himself  being  taught,  cared  for,  gov 
erned,  and  set  in  order  by  some  competent  and  cock 
sure  son  or  daughter  of  twenty  or  thereabouts.  Per 
haps,  upon  this  discovery,  the  wisest  plan  is  to  abdi 
cate  at  once  with  what  grace  and  good-humor  we  can 
muster;  but  sometimes  the  change  of  position  has 
come  about  by  such  slow  and  imperceptible  degrees 
that  we  have  been  deposed,  lo,  this  long  time,  before 
we  suspect  it,  and  it's  too  late  for  action  of  any  kind. 
The  king  is  dead ;  long  live  the  king  ! 

This  last  phenomenon  is  what  had  taken  place  in 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  77 

the  Van  Cleve  household  during  the  two  or  three 
years  succeeding  that  dramatic  day  when  Van  Ken- 
drick  grew  up.  No  one  of  them  knew  how  or  when  it 
happened ;  no  one  exactly  resented  it ;  perhaps  the 
family  were  only  conscious  of  his  ascendency  when 
their  affairs  came  to  one  of  those  crises  that  were  for 
ever  occurring.  Nevertheless,  it  would  have  been 
glaringly  apparent  to  any  outsider  that  the  young  Van 
Cleve,  with  his  lanky,  undeveloped  figure  and  his  smooth 
chin,  and  flat,  straight,  smooth  upper  lip  on  which  he 
was  desperately  cultivating  half  a  dozen  scattering 
bristles,  with  his  youthful  voice  which  had  just  settled 
into  a  rather  harsh  bass,  and  his  uneasy  reticence,  and 
the  amazing  seriousness  with  which  he  took  himself 
most  of  the  time  —  it  would  have  been  apparent  to 
any  observing  person,  I  say,  that  this  more  or  less 
callow  young  gentleman  was  the  head  of  the  House  of 
Van  Cleve,  for  all  his  callowness.  Outward  and  visible 
signs  declared  it,  if  nothing  else.  Van  sat  at  the  end 
of  the  table  and  carved  the  meat  nowadays;  he  read 
the  paper  over  his  coffee-cup  of  a  morning  while  his 
uncle  meekly  got  through  breakfast  without  that 
literary  entertainment ;  he  took  his  hat  and  slammed 
the  hall  door  behind  him  and  went  off  down  town  to 
the  office  with  his  peers;  the  family  accounts  were 
submitted  to  him;  the  women  came  to  him  for  their 
money ;  the  servants  were  trained  to  regard  his  tastes 
-  "Mrs.  Van  Cleef  she  say,  'Marta,  Mr.  Kendrick  he 
don't  like  those  biscuit/  shust  like  she'd  say,  'Marta, 
der  Herr  Gott,  He  don't  like  those  biscuit/"  their  Ger 
man  maid  remarked  acutely ;  these  were  a  few  of  the 
straws  showing  what  way  the  wind  blew.  Possibly  Van 
himself  had  a  clearer  conception  of  the  position  than 
any  of  the  others,  although  the  Fates  had  conspired  to 
put  him. there  —  it  was  none  of  his  doing;  to  accept 
responsibilities  was  natural  to  him,  and  he  was  not  at 
all  disposed  to  be  arrogant  or  overbearing  in  his  leader- 


78  VAN   CLEVE: 

ship ;  the  privilege  of  bullying  a  lot  of  women  and  one 
feeble  elderly  gentleman  did  not  attract  him.  The 
young  fellow  knew  very  well  that  he  was  the  strongest 
member,  in  truth,  the  only  strong  member  of  the  family  ; 
he  put  it,  privately,  in  his  practical  and  literal  way, 
that  he  was  the  only  one  who  had  ever  earned  a  cent, 
or  displayed  a  particle  of  common-sense  about  either 
saving  or  spending  it ;  yet  he  took  no  great  credit  to 
himself  on  that  account.  Van  Cleve  could  not,  for 
the  life  of  him,  have  understood  how  any  man  in  the 
same  circumstances  could  have  acted  otherwise.  He 
had  to  take  care  of  them  —  Grandma  and  Uncle  Stan 
and  all  of  them,  didn't  he  ?  By  Jove,  he  —  why,  he 
had  to,  you  know  !  There  wasn't  any  getting  around 
that.  They  couldn't  do  anything  for  themselves ; 
while,  as  to  him,  work  didn't  worry  him  any.  He  had 
to  work,  anyhow,  didn't  he  ?  Do  you  suppose  anybody 
was  going  to  give  him  his  living  and  a  good  time  for 
nothing  ?  Not  much  ! 

According  to  these  fairly  cool  and  accurate  or  —  as 
Van  would  have  called  them  himself  —  level-headed 
views,  did  Mr.  Kendrick  pursue  his  career.  The  family 
got  used  to  his  queer  youthful  maturity;  they  got 
used  to  the  idea  of  his  being  steady  and  successful  as 
if  it  were  the  most  everyday  thing  in  the  world  for  a 
young  man  to  be  steady  and  successful ;  they  got  used 
to  being  dependent  on  him,  and  Van  Cleve,  on  his 
own  side,  got  used  to  it,  too.  He  directed  the  dis 
position  of  what  little  money  they  had  left  from  the 
original  inheritance,  and  added  his  own  to  it,  and  kept 
the  old  strong  box  with  "J.  VAN  CLEVE"  on  the  top 
of  it  in  his  closet  in  his  own  room  and  carried  the  keys 
unquestioned.  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  sometimes  said  with  a 
sigh  that  he  reminded  her  of  his  grandfather;  but  as 
the  late  Joshua  had  been  a  spry,  dry,  little  man  with 
a  hard  jaw,  and  as  bald  as  a  turnip  at  less  than  twenty- 
five  years  of  age,  she  could  not  have  discerned  much 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  79 

physical  resemblance.  By  a  coincidence  the  likeness 
most  struck  her  about  the  first  of  the  month  when  the 
bills  came  around ;  Van  Cleve  did  not  always  see  all 
of  them  —  does  any  lady  ever  show  the  man  of  the 
house  all  her  bills  ?  —  and  perhaps  the  grandmother 
recalled  the  days  when  she  had  quakingly  presented 
the  milliners'  and  dressmakers'  statements  to  her 
Joshua  (who,  nevertheless,  was  reasonably  liberal  to 
his  family),  or,  dreadful  to  relate,  smuggled  them  out 
of  his  sight  and  knowledge.  Times  were  altered,  and 
she  and  Mrs.  Lucas  were  both  of  them  good,  upright, 
self-denying  women  who  passed  by  the  most  enticing 
shop  windows  and  bargain  counters  resolutely,  and 
turned  and  mended  and  cut  over  their  clothes  and  re 
modelled  their  old  hats,  and  made  hash  for  Monday 
dinner  out  of  Sunday's  joint  with  the  utmost  gallantry 
and  cheerfulness.  As  has  been  hinted,  they  clashed 
seriously  with  Van  Cleve  only  when  the  question  arose 
of  one  of  those  indisputably  wise,  well-considered,  and 
profitable  changes  which  everybody  in  the  house,  ex 
cept  Van  himself,  was  eternally  planning. 

"That  Elmhurst  Place  house  is  only  thirty-seven- 
and-a-half  a  month  —  only  two  dollars  and  a  half 
more  than  this  —  the  rent's  practically  the  same,"  his 
aunt  argued  about  six  months  after  their  enthusiastic 
installation  at  No.  8  Summit  Avenue;  "and  no  com 
parison  between  the  houses  —  no  comparison !  It's 
just  exactly  what  we  were  hunting  for  last  summer 
when  we  had  to  take  this.  Of  course  it  was  rented 
then,  Elmhurst  Place  is  so  desirable.  And  that's  why 
I'm  so  anxious  to  speak  for  it  at  once,  before  anybody 
else  snaps  it  up.  I'd  better  see  the  agent  to-day, 
hadn't  I,  Van?"  She  looked  at  her  nephew  with  an 
odd  mingling  of  persuasion  and  command ;  Van  Cleve, 
the  women  said  to  one  another,  was  so  hard  to  manage 
at  times;  it  was  so  hard  to  make  him  understand. 
Now  he  swallowed  the  last  of  his  coffee  and  folded  up 


80  VAN   CLEVE: 

his  napkin  with  a  maddening  deliberation  before 
answering. 

"No,  I  think  not,  Aunt  Myra.  I  think  we'd  better 
not  move.  That  two-dollars-and-a-half  difference  in 
the  rent  just  about  pays  the  water  rate.  It's  not  quite 
the  same  thing,  you  see.  Besides,  it  would  cost  a  lot 
to  move.  What's  the  matter  with  this  house,  anyhow  ? 
You  liked  it  well  enough  at  first.'7 

All  three  ladies  gave  a  gentle  scream  of  consternation. 
"Why,  Van!  This  house!  Why,  you  know  we  just 
took  it  because  we  had  to  go  somewhere  — /" 

"And  we  didn't  know  what  a  state  it  was  in  —  that 
awful  pink  and  green  and  blue  wall-paper  on  the  back 
bedroom  — !" 

"I'm  afraid  the  place  will  fall  down  over  our  heads 
before  we  can  get  out  of  it !  Three  of  the  door 
knobs  and  I  don't  know  how  many  window-catches 
are  all  loose  and  waggly  — /"  Everybody  began  to  de 
claim  vigorously,  if  without  much  sequence ;  it  was 
really  impossible  to  think  immediately  of  all  the  reasons 
against  living  a  minute  longer  in  this  unspeakable  house. 

"Oh,  I  guess  they'll  fix  those  things  for  us.  It's 
not  going  to  fall  down  right  off,  anyhow ;  we'd  better 
stay  and  give  it  another  chance,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
placidly,  returning  to  his  paper. 

"Well,  but  ever  since  those  horrid  people  moved 
next  door,  the  tone  of  this  neighborhood  has  lowered 
so  —  that's  my  main  objection  to  staying  here,"  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  remonstrated;  "the  woman  had  a  shawl 
airing  out  of  one  of  the  upstairs  back  windows  yester 
day  morning.  Think  of  it !  A  great,  coarse,  red  shawl 
hanging  right  in  the  window  !  I've  never  lived  next 
door  to  anything  quite  so  common  as  that  before  !" 

Van,  behind  the  newspaper,  studying  the  market 
reports,  gave  no  sign  of  having  heard  her.  "He's 
Joshua  all  over!"  the  grandmother  said  inwardly, 
divided  between  exasperation  and  a  kind  of  pride; 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  81 

"he  used  to  sit  just  that  way  and  not  answer  me  time 
and  again  !"  She  was  silent  a  little,  perhaps  thinking 
of  old  days ;  but  the  others  persevered  with  reproachful 
vehemence. 

"We  could  take  that  money,  that  sixty-five  dollars 
we  got  from  the  old  farm  the  other  day,  and  use  it  for 
the  moving,  so  it  wouldn't  cost  you  anything,  Van 
Cleve,"  said  Evelyn,  who  had  a  talent  for  this  style  of 
argument.  "I'm  sure  it  isn't  healthy  here.  There's 
a  great  big  damp  spot  in  one  corner  of  the  yard  when 
ever  it  rains.  I'm  going  to  speak  to  the  doctor  about 
it.  Mother  oughtn't  to  stay  in  a  humid  atmosphere ; 
her  nerves  will  give  out.  It  takes  ever  so  much  nervous 
energy  to  stand  the  colds  she  has,  and  of  course  the 
low  quality  of  the  air  right  here  must  bring  them  on." 

" Never  mind  me,  Evelyn;  never  mind  me  —  I'll 
soon  be  well  —  my  cold  isn't  anything,"  cried  out  Mrs. 
Lucas,  though,  indeed,  a  sudden  wild  terror  started  in 
her  large,  beautiful  dark  eyes;  she  was  very  easily 
frightened  about  herself  and  her  state  of  health,  and 
the  merest  suggestion  of  any  need  for  doctors  sent 
before  her  mind  in  dismally  dramatic  procession  a 
dozen  appalling  pictures  of  suffering,  decline,  death 
agonies,  the  hearse,  the  coffin,  the  ghastly  open  grave  ! 
She  began  with  a  note  of  almost  frenzied  appeal  in  her 
voice :  "  Van  dear,  do  put  down  that  paper  and  listen. 
I  think  it's  more  important  than  you  realize  for  us  to 
get  away  from  this  house  and  neighborhood,  and  it 
will  be  money  well  spent  to  move.  You're  just  as  fine 
and  strong  and  splendid  as  you  can  be,  Van  —  you 
know  we  all  know  that  —  you're  a  dear,  noble  fellow," 
said  Mrs.  Lucas,  stirred  by  a  real  and  generous  emotion, 
her  sweet,  hysterical  voice  breaking  a  little ;  she  was 
sincerely  fond  of  the  young  man;  "but  you  don't 
realize  how  young  you  are;  you  haven't  had  the  ex 
perience  I've  had.  You're  not  so  well  able  to  judge  as 
I  am.  I  think  it's  our  duty  to  move.  We  all  think 


82  VAN   CLEVE: 

so,  and  two  heads  are  better  than  one,  you  know, 
Van." 

" Depends  on  the  heads, "said Van  Cleve,  flippantly, 
unmoved  by  these  powerful  representations  which,  as 
was  provokingly  apparent,  he  was  not  even  going  to 
answer.  Instead,  he  got  up,  taking  out  his  pipe,  and 
went  over  to  the  mantel  for  a  match. 

"I  wish  —  I  wish  you  wouldn't  do  that,  Van,"  said 
Mrs.  Joshua,  distressfully;  "I  promised  your  dear 
mother  for  you  that  you  wouldn't  touch  tobacco  nor 
liquor  before  you  were  twenty-five.  It  was  a  sacred 
promise,  Van." 

Van  Cleve  looked  down  at  her,  humorous  and  for 
bearing;  he  stuffed  the  tobacco  down  into  the  bowl. 
"Oh,  bosh,  Grandma  !"  he  said  with  profane  cheerful 
ness  ;  and  stooped  and  kissed  the  old  lady's  cheek,  and 
walked  off  unimpressed.  He  was  guiltless  of  diplo 
macy;  but,  strangely  and  illogically  enough,  at  this 
speech  and  the  rough,  boyish  caress,  Mrs.  Van  Cleve 
surrendered  without  terms,  struck  her  colors,  and  went 
over  to  his  side  incontinently ! 

"Well,  I  daresay  Van's  right  about  it,  Myra,"  she 
said  as  the  door  closed  behind  him.  "There's  no  real 
reason  why  we  should  move.  And  anyhow  Van  Cleve 
ought  to  have  the  say  —  he's  taking  care  of  us  all  — 
he's  the  best  boy  that  ever  lived!"  Her  old  face 
trembled  momentarily. 

"Oh,  of  course!  Van  Cleve  is  always  right !"  Eve 
lyn  proclaimed  satirically ;  she  remained  alone  to  fight 
the  battle  with  the  older  lady,  for  Mrs.  Lucas  had 
already  dashed  into  the  hall  after  her  nephew,  who  was 
in  the  act  of  putting  on  his  overcoat. 

"Van,"  she  said  tensely,  stopping  him  with  one  arm 
in  the  sleeve ;  "I  want  you  to  let  me  telephone  about 
that  Elmhurst  Place  house  and  get  the  refusal  of  it 
for  a  day,  anyhow  —  just  for  to-day,  Van,  so  that  you 
can  see  it."  Her  voice  rose:  "I  want  you  to  let  me  do 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  83 

that.  You  don't  know  anything  about  the  house.  If 
you  could  see  it,  I  know  you'd  think  differently.  It's 
so  much  nearer  the  Art  School,  for  one  thing.  Evelyn 
wouldn't  have  near  so  far  to  walk.  She's  not  strong, 
you  know,  Van  Cleve ;  and  I'm  afraid  of  that  long 
walk  for  her.  I'm  afraid  it  takes  her  strength  so  that 
she  can't  do  her  work  properly.  The  other  day  when 
she  came  in  her  hands  were  perfectly  numb  with  the 
cold;  you  must  have  noticed  it  at  dinner  — !" 

"Well,  they  weren't  so  numb  but  that  she  could 
work  her  knife  and  fork  all  right,"  said  Van,  with  a 
brutal  grin;  "when  they  get  too  bad  for  that,  I'll 
begin  to  worry!"  And  then,  seeing  the  look  of  out 
rage  on  his  aunt's  face,  he  added  hastily  and  with 
earnest  kindness;  "now  look  here,  Aunt  Myra,  you 
know  you're  just  feeling  a  little  restless,  that's  all 
that's  the  matter.  You  often  feel  that  way,  you 
know.  This  house  is  all  right.  Now  don't  let's  talk 
any  more  about  this,  will  you  ?  You  know  we  can't 
afford  to  move  around.  And  if  any  extra  money  comes 
in,  like  that  from  the  farm  last  week,  we  ought  to  save 
it.  We  can't  go  spending  it  on  foolishness.  Now 
let's  try  to  be  satisfied  and  stay  here.  I'll  see  if  I 
can't  get  them  to  change  that  wall-paper  you  hate  so," 
added  poor  Van,  unconsciously  pathetic  in  his  efforts  to 
appease  her. 

"Restless!"  ejaculated  Mrs.  Lucas,  indignantly. 
"Oh,  well,  I  suppose  it's  useless  for  me  to  talk.  I 
might  die  in  this  horrid  damp  hole  and  Evelyn  be 
hopelessly  crippled  for  life  from  that  walk,  and  you 
would  still  insist  that  we  were  just  whimsical  and  rest 
less  —  /"  But  Van  Cleve  was  gone. 

Mrs.    Lucas   returned    to    her   domestic    rounds   in 
abysmal  low  spirits.     Her  cold  was  getting  steadily 
worse  —  she  could  feel  it  growing  on  her  !     The  air  of 
the  house  was  positively  saturated  with  moisture  - 
particularly  in  the  back  bedroom  with  that  pink-blue- 


84  VAN   CLEVE: 

green  abomination  on  the  walls.  It  would  be  her  fate 
to  die  here,  she  knew  it,  she  was  convinced  of  it !  And 
the  Elmhurst  Place  house  did  have  such  a  beautiful 
bay-window  in  the  hall,  and  two  hardwood  floors 
downstairs  !  She  was  ill  in  bed  when  Van  Cleve  came 
home  that  evening.  Evelyn  rushed  up  and  down 
from  the  sick-room  with  tragically  repressed  grief; 
Major  Stanton  sat  around  in  corners  out  of  the  way, 
looking  more  uncomfortable  than  alarmed ;  Mrs.  Van 
Cleve  poured  the  coffee  in  reproving  silence.  And  when 
the  doctor  reported  that  it  looked  as  if  Mrs.  Lucas 
might  be  going  to  have  grippe,  Van  Cleve  felt  like  an 
assassin.  It  was  in  vain  the  unlucky  youth  told  him 
self  that  his  aunt  might  have  had  grippe  anywhere,  in 
any  house,  and  that  even  if  he  had  consented  to  their 
moving  to  Elmhurst  Place  the  very  next  day,  it  could 
hardly  have  spared  her  this  attack.  He  felt  wretchedly 
that  her  illness  was  all  his  fault  —  everything  was  all 
his  fault  —  everybody  was  being  made  sick  and  un 
comfortable  and  unhappy  by  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  and 
his  mean  desire  to  save  a  little  money  ! 

The  next  time  anybody  went  to  call  on  the  Van 
Cleves,  they  had  moved.  They  had  been  over  on  Elm 
hurst  Place  for  a  month,  and  just  loved  ity  they  declared. 
Evelyn  said  that  her  mother  had  been  on  the  verge  of 
a  dreadful  attack  of  influenza,  but  they  got  her  away 
from  that  polluted  air  on  Summit  Avenue  just  in  time, 
and  she  began  to  mend  at  once.  To  be  sure  this  was 
only  two  squares  off,  but  there  was  the  most  amazing 
difference  in  the  atmosphere  —  her  mother's  case 
proved  it  —  and  really  that  other  house  had  gotten  to 
be  perfectly  awful,  you  know. 


CHAPTER  VI 
MOSTLY  IDLE  TALK 

THAT  there  was  really  something  a  little  unusual 
about  the  Van  Cleves  —  always  excepting  young  Ken- 
drick,  as  I  have  repeatedly  stated  —  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  in  two  or  three  years,  more  or  less,  they  had 
become  as  firmly  established  socially  as  if  they  had 
lived  here  all  their  lives,  without  anybody  ever  hinting 
that  they  were  trying  to  "get  in"  or  "  sniffing"  deroga- 
torily,  as  people  did  about  that  unfortunate  Jameson 
girl.  The  Van  Cleve  women  were  a  very  different 
stamp.  Evelyn  and  her  mother  —  of  course  the  old 
lady  did  not  go  out  much  —  were  invited  about  a  good 
deal ;  they  were  bright,  they  had  the  proper  manners, 
and  they  were  pretty  sure  to  make  themselves  enter 
taining  —  sometimes  unintentionally.  The  single  thing 
in  the  way  of  their  popularity  was  that  it  was  not  easy 
to  tell  of  these  ladies  who  their  friends  were,  since  they 
changed  almost  as  often  as  they  changed  houses ;  one 
day  they  would  be  embracing  people  with  a  warm 
passage  of  Christian  names  and  terms  of  endearment 
-  and  the  next  news  you  had,  they  had  ceased  to 
speak  to  So-and-So  !  She  had  behaved  in  such  an 
underhanded,  deceitful,  treacherous  way  about  hiring  a 
cook  —  she  had  intimated  that  Mrs.  Lucas's  delicate 
health  was  all  nerves  or  hysteria,  did  you  ever  hear  of 
anything  so  monstrous?  —  she  was  vindictively  jealous 
of  Evelyn,  etc.,  etc.  Yet  they  were  not  without  some 
sound  and  stable  attachments,  as  for  the  Gilberts,  for 
instance,  with  whom  they  never  had  any  grave  falling 

85 


86  VAN   CLEVE: 

out.  This,  however,  may  have  been  partly  because  of 
Van  Cleve,  who,  besides  being  not  nearly  so  quick  to 
make  new  friends  nor  so  violently  enthusiastic  about 
them,  was  very  much  more  steadfast  to  the  old  ones. 
To  be  sure,  the  intimacy  of  the  feminine  Van  Cleves 
with  Lorrie  and  her  mother  was  of  a  somewhat  fitful 
character  and  subject  to  wax  or  wane  at  any  moment 
without  notice ;  but  at  one  time  Miss  Lucas  was  run 
ning  over  to  the  Warwick  Lane  house  every  day.  She 
insisted  on  helping  them  with  their  home  dressmaking 
and  millinery ;  she  suggested  charming  rearrangements 
of  their  furniture ;  she  painted  a  portrait  of  Lorrie  — 
an  amazing  water-color  portrait  wherein  Lorrie  appeared 
with  a  wide,  fixed  stare  goggling  at  you  out  of  a 
jungle  of  chocolate-tinted  hair.  Mrs.  Lucas  pro 
nounced  it  marvellously  accurate  and  a  masterpiece, 
whether  considered  as  a  likeness  or  merely  a  picture. 
Lorrie  herself  laughed  and  said  she  supposed  you  never 
really  knew  what  you  looked  like  to  other  people,  and 
were  always  surprised  and  disappointed  to  find  out. 
Bob  remarked  ruthlessly  that  those  eyes  reminded  him 
of  two  buckeyes  in  a  pan  of  milk.  Van  Cleve,  upon  the 
work  of  art  being  paraded  before  him,  was  silent  - 
unwisely,  as  it  turned  out,  for  the  severest  criticism 
could  not  have  roused  Evelyn  or  her  mother  more. 

1 '  Well  ?  Well  ?  Aren't  you  going  to  say  anything  ? ' ' 
demanded  the  artist,  tartly. 

"Why,  it  —  it  looks  something  like  her,"  said  Van, 
feebly.  In  fact,  the  thing  did  have  a  sort  of  ghostly 
resemblance  to  Lorrie.  But  what  portrait-painter 
wants  to  be  told  that  his  creation  "looks  like"  the 
original  ? 

"It  was  intended  to  look  like  her/'  Evelyn  said  with 
fine  scorn.  "But  I  didn't  expect  that  you'd  think  it 
was  good.  No  need  to  ask  you  !" 

"That's  so,  Evie.  If  I  don't  say  anything  you  get 
mad,  and  if  I  do  you  get  mad,  so  there  doesn't  seem  to 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  87 

be  much  need  your  asking  me,  sure  enough/'  said 
Van  Cleve,  with  his  unshakable  good  humor  that  the 
women  found  so  hard  to  "put  up  with,"  as  they  them 
selves  sometimes  complained  to  one  another. 

"Of  course  you  don't  think  any  picture  of  her  could 
be  good  enough,"  flashed  out  Evelyn,  jerking  the  draw 
ing-board  back  into  its  corner.  "We  all  know  what 
you  think  about  Lorrie  Gilbert,  Van."  She  gave 
him  a  savagely  significant  glance. 

"I  know  you  get  excited  and  say  a  lot  of  things  you 
don't  mean  sometimes,"  Van  retorted,  coloring,  how 
ever,  with  temper  —  or  could  it  have  been  some  other 
feeling  ? 

"The  idea!  She's  at  least  a  year  older  than  you 
are  —  at  least!  And  she's  engaged  to  that  Mr.  Cort- 
wright,  anyhow  —  or  as  good  as  engaged  !"  the  young 
lady  pursued,  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing,  or 
fancying  she  saw,  her  cousin  wince.  "That's  what 
everybody  says." 

"I  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about  —  I  don't 
know  anything  about  Miss  Gilbert's  affairs,"  Van 
Cleve  stuttered,  turning  redder  than  ever.  He  was 
fairly  routed,  and  got  up  and  stalked  out  of  the  house, 
followed  by  her  inquisitive  mockery.  Once  outside,  he 
said  something  much  stronger  —  a  distressingly  strong 
word  of  one  syllable  did  Mr.  Kendrick  utter ;  and 
he  pulled  his  hat  down  over  his  brows  with  a  morose 
gesture  as  he  tramped  away,  without  his  pleasant 
whistle  for  once. 

It  must  have  been  after  this  that  there  occurred  one 
of  those  intervals  of  coolness  towards  the  other  family 
on  the  part  of  the  Van  Cleve  ladies  which  people  were 
accustomed  to  witness.  The  Gilberts  themselves  were 
quite  unconscious  of  it ;  they  were  not  looking  out  for 
slights  or  indifference,  and  did  not  know  how  to  quarrel 
with  anybody.  But  Evelyn's  visits  ceased  for  a  while, 
and  perhaps  Van  Cleve  himself  did  not  go  to  the  Pro- 


88  VAN   CLEVE: 

fessor's  house  in  the  evenings  so  often.  Mrs.  Lucas 
confided  to  those  who  were  in  high  favor  just  then  that 
she  was  rather  glad  of  it ;  she  didn't  want  to  be  un 
charitable,  but  she  could  not  honestly  say  that  she 
thought  Bob's  was  a  good  influence  for  Van  Cleve.  Of 
course  Van  had  great  strength  of  character  and  power 
of  resisting  temptation^  still  —  young  men  —  and  here 
she  would  break  off,  giving  her  audience  a  wonderfully 
sagacious,  warning  look.  My  old  friend,  Mr.  J.  B.  B. 
Taylor  happened  to  pass  through  the  city  just  then 
on  his  large  orbit  of  travel  and  inspection  —  J.  B.  has 
something  to  do  with  a  concrete  construction  company 
-  and  I  recall  a  little  talk  we  had  on  this  very  subject. 
It  began  by  my  mentioning  his  last  visit,  and  the  group 
of  gentlemen  we  had  met  lunching  at  the  Saint  Simon ; 
and  I  reported  some  observations  regarding  Van  Cleve's 
family  which  caused  J.  B.  alternately  to  smile  broadly 
and  wickedly,  and  anon  to  grunt  "Huh!"  in  a  pro 
found  manner.  When  I  had  finished  :  — 

"Well,"  said  he,  "that  Kendrick  boy  is  something 
of  a  boy,  I  judge  —  considerable  of  a  boy.  The  fact 
is,  Gebhardt  spoke  to  me  about  him,  —  just  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  conversation,  you  know,  —  but  when 
he  found  that  I  knew  something  of  the  young  man, 
why,  he  warmed  up  and  said  some  very  nice  things. 
It  seems  they  gave  him  a  raise  at  the  National  Loan  the 
other  day ;  they  think  a  great  deal  of  him.  From  what 
I  hear,  Kendrick's  the  getting-ahead  kind  —  one  of 
these  long-headed,  hard-working  fellows  that  knows 
he  can't  pick  any  money  off  of  trees,  and  expects  to 
buckle  down  and  make  it.  That's  a  pretty  good  spirit 
for  these  days  with  all  this  get-rich-quick  feeling  in 
the  air.  And,  speaking  of  that,  I've  got  an  impression 
that  our  friend  Gebhardt  himself  is  a  little  given  that 
way  —  towards  experimenting  on  the  get-rich-quick 
lines,  I  mean.  He's  a  visionary  fellow;  I  wouldn't 
trust  his  judgment  very  far.  Of  course  I  know  he's 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  89 

been  quite  successful  with  his  little  bank,  but  there's 
some  luck  about  things  like  that.  If  Gebhardt's  a  self- 
made  man,  he  didn't  pay  enough  attention  to  his 
cupola."  And  here  J.  B.,  evidently  feeling  that  he  had 
allowed  himself  to  run  into  some  indiscretion,  abruptly 
changed  topics.  "  What's  become  of  those  other  people? 
That  pin-headed  masher  —  you  know  —  what  was  his 
name  ?  And  the  other  boy  ?" 

I  informed  him  that  Mr.  Cortwright  was  still  here, 
in  business ;  I  was  not  certain  how  successful,  but  he 
seemed  to  have  money  enough ;  he  was  considered  very 
handsome,  and  —  er  —  well,  a  little  inclined  to  be  — 
er  —  sporty  —  you  know ;  and  he  was  still  something 
of  a  " masher,"  to  use  Mr.  Taylor's  own  elegant  phrase. 
In  fact,  at  one  time  or  another,  Mr.  Cortwright  had 
been  sentimentally  attentive  to  every  girl  in  society, 
but  here  latterly  he  had  settled  down  on  Miss  Gilbert, 
and  people  in  general  thought  this  would  be  a  go,  at 
last. 

"Well,  I'm  glad  she  isn't  my  daughter,"  J.  B.  com 
mented  briefly;  "Gilbert,  you  say?  That  was  that 
boy's  name,  I  remember  now.  Is  he  around  still?" 

"Yes,  it's  the  same  family.  Yes,  he's  here  and 
working.  He's  been  a  little  wild ;  they  say  now  he's 
drinking.  I  don't  know  how  true  it  is  —  may  be 
nothing  but  gossip,"  said  I,  not  without  reluctance. 
I  liked  Bob  Gilbert.  I  never  met  anybody  that  didn't 
like  him.  But,  with  the  most  charitable  disposition 
in  the  world,  I  still  would  have  been  obliged  to  acknowl 
edge  that  one  never  heard  anything  creditable  about 
Bob,  whereas  report  concerning  his  friend,  that  young 
Mr.  Kendrick  (nobody  thought  of  him  as  a  boy  any 
longer),  justified  all  that  J.  B.  had  said.  J.  B.,  indeed, 
felt  a  real  interest  in  the  latter's  fortunes ;  and  he  took 
Van  Cleve  and  the  Major  (yes,  the  Major,  flowing 
whiskers,  antebellum  airs  and  all !)  and  the  present 
writer  to  the  Saint  Simon  next  day,  and  entertained  us 


90  VAN   CLEVE: 

regally  at  luncheon.  And  he  listened  with  the  most 
appreciative  courtesy  to  Major  Stanton's  story  about 
his  great-grand-aunt,  or  some  other  female  ancestor, 
replying  to  Bishop  Whipple's  warnings  concerning  the 
future  life :  "Why,  Bishop,  you  and  I  don't  need  to  be 
afraid  of  the  Judgment  Day,  I'm  sure.  It's  going  to 
take  them  a  long  while  to  get  down  to  the  W's  and  V's, 
you  know! "  —ha,  ha!  I  came  across  the  same  sprightly 
anecdote  in  an  old  joke-book  the  other  day,  attributed 
to  Walpole,  in  conversation  with  John  Wesley.  "  Why, 
Mr.  Wesley,"  says  Horace;  "I'm  sure  you  and  I 
needn't  be  afraid  of  the  Judgment  Day — "  etc.,  etc. 

How  much  truth  was  there  in  the  rumors  that  had 
been  circulating  somewhat  as  above  reported  for  the 
last  year  or  so?  To  begin  with,  those  sharp  hints 
levelled  by  Miss  Lucas  at  her  cousin,  how  near  the  mark 
did  they  come?  Van  Cleve  had  first  met  Lorrie  Gil 
bert  years  before  when  he  was  nothing  but  a  big, 
gangling  boy  chum  of  her  brother's,  and  she,  although 
so  nearly  his  own  age,  already  a  grown-up  young  lady. 
In  that  far-off  time  Van  looked  upon  her  with  both 
shyness  and  indifference.  Asked  if  he  thought  her 
pretty  or  bright,  he  would  have  replied  that  he  didn't 
know  —  he  hadn't  thought  about  her  at  all  —  he  didn't 
care  for  girls,  and  never  stayed  around  where  they  were, 
if  he  could  help  it.  As  it  happened  —  indeed,  have  we 
not  seen  it  happen  under  our  own  eyes  ?  —  he  did  not 
have  much  chance  to  improve  or  outgrow  his  deplorable 
tastes,  for  that  summer  was  the  end  of  Van  Cleve 's 
playtime,  and  really  the  end  of  his  boyhood.  He  could 
spend  no  time,  still  less  money,  on  girls,  he  who  had 
his  family  to  take  care  of  and  his  way  to  make  in  the 
world.  As  he  grew  older,  it  became  his  habit  of  mind 
to  regard  marriage,  for  a  man  in  his  position,  as  sheer 
insanity,  and  falling  in  love  only  a  milder  form  of  the 
same  affliction.  Both  must  be  postponed  until  he 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  91 

arrived  at  the  locality  which  he  called  to  himself,  Easy 
Street.  In  some  vast,  indefinite  future,  when  he  felt 
himself  " pretty  well  fixed/'  and  when  he  could  get 
Grandma  and  the  rest  of  them  comfortably  settled 
somewhere  or  somehow,  so  that  they  would  not  be 
quite  so  much  on  his  mind,  when  Evelyn  would  be 
married,  perhaps,  and  when  he  could  allow  them  a 
reasonable  income  on  which  they  could  have  a  little 
fun,  you  know,  though,  of  course,  he  would  have  to  see 
that  they  didn't  do  anything  foolish  with  it  —  in  the 
future  when  Van  planned  that  all  this  should  happen,  he 
sometimes  rather  diffidently  speculated  about  a  home 
for  himself  and  Somebody.  He  never  divulged  these 
plots  and  visions  even  to  Bob,  his  nearest  friend ;  he 
was  very  much  ashamed  of  them ;  he  had  no  notion  of 
complaining  about  his  responsibilities.  And  as  to  that 
other  dream,  he  had  never  even  named  his  Somebody ; 
to  dream  is  silly  enough,  but  to  dream  of  sharing  your 
life  with  a  person  who  doesn't  exist,  seemed  to  Van 
Cleve  the  utter  abyss  of  silliness.  His  prospective 
wife  was  so  far  a  delicious  myth ;  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  she  was  to  have  brown  hair  with  gold  lights 
in  it,  hair  that  waved  a  little  nicely,  and  big  brown  eyes, 
and  a  fair  complexion  with  a  good  deal  of  color  in  it, 
and  a  short  nose,  straight,  but  set  on  so  that  you  were 
not  quite  certain  whether  it  did  not  tilt  upward  ever 
so  slightly ;  and  she  would  have  a  very  pleasant  laugh, 
and  a  pretty  round  waist,  and  —  and,  in  short,  any 
body  in  whom  Van  Cleve  had  confided  would  have 
recognized,  by  the  time  he  got  through,  a  surprisingly 
good  likeness  of  Miss  Lorrie  Gilbert ! 

The  young  man  did  not  suspect  it  himself.  When 
he  went  to  the  house,  he  thought  in  all  honesty  it  was 
to  see  Bob.  He  took  a  meal  there  at  least  once  in  the 
week ;  Mrs.  Gilbert  was  so  used  to  him  she  sometimes 
called  him  "son"  forgetfully ;  Lorrie  and  he  sat  on  the 
porch  summer  evenings,  or  by  the  sitting-room  hearth 


92  VAN   CLEVE: 

in  winter,  so  completely  at  home  together  that  they 
could  be  silent  when  and  as  long  as  they  chose,  unem 
barrassed ;  it  was  "Lorrie"  and  "Van"  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  the  girl  openly  regarded  him  with  almost 
the  same  feeling  as  she  did  her  brother,  save  that  she 
listened  and  deferred  to  him  far  more.  Only  when 
Cortwright's  name  was  brought  up,  or  that  debonair 
gentleman  came  to  call,  which  he  was  beginning  to  do 
with  ominous  frequency,  did  the  two  other  young  people 
feel  any  constraint.  Lorrie,  in  her  third  or  fourth 
season,  had  seen  something  of  the  world,  and  been  not 
undesired  by  young  men;  her  novitiate  was  over. 
Nevertheless,  she  had  a  way  of  blushing  and  brightening 
at  Cortwright's  appearance  which  to  any  experienced 
onlooker  would  have  been  full  of  meaning.  Van  Cleve, 
at  least,  saw  it  with  a  dull  pain  of  resentment.  He 
told  himself  that  he  never  had  liked  Cortwright.  "I 
saw  enough  of  him  down  at  Steinberger's ;  you  can't 
fool  me  about  that  sort  of  fellow  !  But,  hang  it,  I 
believe  girls  like  for  a  man  to  have  the  name  of  being 
fast !"  Van  used  to  think  angrily;  "you  see  so  many 
nice,  good  women  married  to  'em.  It's  not  so  smart  to 
booze  and  bum,  and  chase  around  after  women  and 
horses  —  I  can't  see  what  any  decent  woman  is  think 
ing  of.  I  suppose  there  isn't  a  man  on  earth  but  that's 
done  some  things  he's  ashamed  of  —  but  Cortwright ! 
Why,  he  isn't  fit  to  touch  Lome's  skirt !" 

Of  course  there  was  nothing  personal  in  this.  Van 
Cleve  was  convinced ;  no,  merely  on  principle,  simply 
and  solely  in  behalf  of  abstract  morality,  did  Mr. 
Kendrick  disapprove  of  Mr.  Cortwright.  To  have  told 
him  he  was  jealous  would  have  been  to  invite  a  righteous 
indignation.  In  the  meanwhile,  whenever  Cortwright 
chanced  to  call  at  the  same  time,  his  arrival  was  the 
signal  for  a  sudden  fall  in  the  social  barometer.  It  was 
not  Cortwright's  fault ;  he  was  always  gay,  courteous, 
ready  with  a  joke,  a  story,  a  turn  at  the  piano,  anything 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  93 

to  make  the  evening  go  off  well,  inimitably  good-look 
ing  and  at  ease,  in  becoming  contrast  to  Van  Cleve,  who 
would  sit  grumpily  smoking  or  grumpily  unsmoking, 
answering  in  curt  and  disagreeably  plain  words,  and, 
after  making  a  wet  blanket  of  himself  generally,  would 
get  up  and  go  off  in  pointed  hurry.  I  fear  Mr.  Kendrick 
was  not  poignantly  regretted  on  these  occasions.  "  You 
seem  to  take  life  so  seriously,  Kendrick.  Don't  you 
believe  in  people  having  a  good  time  as  they  go  along  ? ' ' 
Cortwright  once  asked  him.  Cortwright,  on  his  side, 
met  Van  Cleve  with  unvarying  good  temper  and  civility 
-  for  which,  you  may  believe  me,  poor  Van  liked  him 
none  the  better. 

" Nobody  but  a  prig  objects  to  people  having  fun/7 
he  retorted,  scowling;  "if  I'm  serious,  it's  because  I'm 
built  that  way,  I  suppose.  But  I  never  thought  it  any 
of  my  business  what  other  people  do."  He  looked  hard 
at  the  other. 

"That's  lucky  for  the  rest  of  us,"  Cortwright  said 
with  his  easy  laugh;  "you've  got  such  a  severe  eye. 
Hasn't  he  got  a  severe  eye,  Miss  Jameson?"  And 
upon  this,  while  the  young  lady  was  still  looking 
sideways  at  him  under  her  lashes,  and  smiling  just 
enough  to  show  a  charming  dimple  in  the  corner  of  her 
mouth,  Van  unceremoniously  took  himself  off.  He 
"hadn't  much  use"  (to  quote  him  again)  for  Miss 
Paula  Jameson,  either,  and  often  wished  impatiently 
that  she  would  stop  her  everlasting  running  to  the 
Gilbert's. 

As  for  that  derogatory  tittle-tattle  about  Bob  Gil 
bert,  sad  to  admit,  it  was  not  without  foundation. 
People  were  beginning  to  shake  their  heads  over  him, 
and  to  tell  one  another  that  it  was  too  bad  !  They 
said  that  there  was  nothing  really  wrong  with  the  young 
fellow  —  there  wasn't  any  real  harm  in  him,  only  - 
it  was  probably  not  all  his  fault  —  the  way  boys  are 


94  VAN   CLEVE: 

brought  up  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it  —  Professor 
Gilbert  was  a  fine  man,  a  splendid  scholar,  and  all  that, 
but  what  time  he  was  not  absorbed  in  class  work,  the 
poor  old  gentleman  was  mooning  over  his  researches, 
his  essays,  monographs,  what-d'ye-call-'ems  —  he  had 
no  control  whatever  over  his  son,  and  never  had  had  ! 
Of  course,  Mrs.  Gilbert  and  Lorrie  could  do  nothing 
with  Bob  —  two  women,  both  of  them  too  devoted 
to  him  to  see  where  he  was  going.  That  his  destina 
tion  was  the  one  popularly  known  as  "the  dogs/' 
everybody  was  prophesying.  Too  bad  !  Of  course  he 
might  be  merely  passing  through  the  "wild"  stage 
inevitable  to  youth ;  he  might  straighten  up  yet  — 
it  was  to  be  hoped. 

Van  Cleve,  who  knew  all  about  Bob's  failings,  who 
had  very  likely  known  about  them  long  before  they 
became  public  talk,  never  had  anything  to  say  on  the 
subject.  He  would  not  condemn  his  friend,  but  neither 
would  he  take  the  other's  part.  He  would  say  nothing 
at  all.  There  was  a  hard  streak  in  the  young  man; 
he  was  genuinely  fond  of  Bob,  yet  he  avoided  his  com 
pany  these  days,  took  care  never  to  be  seen  on  the  street 
with  him,  got  out  of  his  way  and  kept  out  of  his  way, 
whenever  it  was  possible.  "I  can't  have  him  coming 
round  here  smelling  like  a  distillery,  and  asking  for  me. 
It  would  queer  me  for  good  with  some  of  these  solid 
men,"  Van  thought;  "I  can't  risk  it.  And  what  good 
would  it  do  him  for  me  to  hang  on  to  Bob,  anyhow  ? 
I  can't  tell  him  anything  but  what  he  knows  already  ; 
he's  got  plenty  of  sense,  if  he'll  only  use  it.  But  if  a 
man's  going  to  make  a  fool  of  himself,  he's  going  to 
make  a  fool  of  himself,  so  what's  the  use?" 

Perhaps  he  did  not  fully  convince  himself  by  these 
arguments ;  but  in  fact  there  was  no  longer  much  need 
for  him  to  put  his  theories  in  practice.  Robert  was 
drifting  naturally  into  his  own  class  of  idlers  and  ne'er- 
do-weels,  and  young  Kendrick  had  less  and  less  occasion 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  95 

to  dodge  his  compromising  company,  they  saw  each 
other  so  seldom,  except  at  the  house.  Sometimes,  even 
when  at  home,  Bob  was  not  visible;  he  had  had  one 
of  his  wretched  headaches  all  day,  so  that  he  was 
obliged  to  keep  his  room,  Mrs.  Gilbert  would  report 
so  guilelessly  that  Van  Cleve,  in  spite  of  his  cultivated 
coldness,  winced  with  pity  and  a  vicarious  shame. 
He  noticed  that  she  was  looking  a  great  deal  older 
nowadays;  there  had  been  a  time  when  you  could 
scarcely  tell  her  back  from  Lome's  if  you  happened  to 
be  walking  behind  her  on  the  street  —  it  was  different 
now.  And  when  it  came  to  Professor  Gilbert,  it 
sounded  perfectly  natural  to  call  him  an  old  gentleman, 
as  we  did  a  moment  ago,  although  he  had  not  yet 
reached  the  sixties ;  he  was  thinner  and  bonier  than 
ever,  and  wrinkled  and  bent  like  Father  Time  himself. 
He,  Sit  any  rate,  understood  the  headaches,  Van  Cleve 
would  think,  regretfully  reading  the  older  man's  haggard 
and  weary  eyes ;  and  Van  wondered  with  a  recoil  so 
strong  it  surprised  himself  if  the  poor  father  had  ever 
had  to  go  out  at  night  and  hunt  for  Bob  —  bring  him 
home  —  get  him  to  bed  and  sobered  up  —  eh,  you 
know  ?  Good  Lord,  that  was  pretty  bad  —  pretty 
bad! 

These  offices  Van  Cleve  had  performed  himself  once 
at  least.  He  was  much  more  irritated  than  scandalized 
-  in  the  beginning  of  the  adventure,  that  is  —  to  find 
Bob  drunk  and  clinging  to  the  lamp  post,  in  the  starry 
winter  cold,  on  his  own  way  home  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  What  was  the  notably  steady  youth,  Mr. 
Kendrick,  doing  out  of  his  bed  at  that  hour?  Have 
no  fear,  ladies  and  gentlemen  !  In  the  pursuance  of 
his  career  of  industry  and  virtue,  he  had  been  to  the 
weekly  meeting  of  the  Central  Avenue  Building  and 
Loan  Association,  in  which  he  held  the  position  of 
secretary.  The  proceedings  closing  about  eleven 
o'clock,  Mr.  Kendrick  had  allowed  himself  a  single 


96  VAN   CLEVE: 

chaste  mug  of  musty  ale,  and  a  game  of  pool  (a  quarter 
apiece,  loser  pays  for  the  table)  in  the  company  of  some 
of  his  fellow-officials,  and  when  he  started  home,  an 
hour  or  so  later,  there  was  a  block  on  the  Central- 
Avenue-and-John-Street  line.  Already  the  returning 
theatre-goers  had  sped  their  several  ways ;  the  streets 
and  Government  Square  and  the  Fountain  had  taken 
on  a  look  of  Babylonian  solitude  and  desolation.  Van 
Cleve  waited  for  his  Elmhill  car,  within  the  triangular 
portico  of  a  corner  drug  store,  where  stood  another 
similarly  belated  gentleman;  and  they  smoked  in 
silence,  shrugging  and  stamping  to  keep  warm.  Van 
remembered  forever  afterwards  how  a  carriage  had 
rolled  by ;  how  he  glanced  up  mechanically  as  it  passed 
into  the  contracted  illumination  of  the  arc-light,  and 
saw  the  occupants.  He  stared;  a  monosyllabic  ex 
clamation  was  jerked  out  of  him  by  stark  surprise. 
"Hungh!"  he  ejaculated  unconsciously.  The  way 
farer  who  shared  the  vestibule  thought  his  own  atten 
tion  was  being  challenged,  and  obligingly  responded. 
" Peach  girl,  wasn't  she?"  he  said;  and  further  volun 
teered;  "that  hair  was  a  ten-blow,  though.  Fellow 
likes  it  that  way,  I  guess."  Van  Cleve  grunted  non- 
committally,  and  they  lapsed  again  into  silence.  Van 
could  never  forget  this  trivial  bit  of  talk,  either ;  he  had 
a  photographic  impression  of  the  whole  incident. 

The  car  came  at  last ;  and  Kendrick  got  on  and  paid 
his  fare  and  rode  to  his  own  corner,  pondering,  part  of 
the  time  with  a  sour  smile.  "None  of  my  affair,  I 
suppose,"  was  the  sum  of  his  reflections.  Strictly 
business  —  his  own  business  !  —  had  been  his  motto 
this  long  while.  He  swung  himself  off  the  rear  step 
at  Durham  Street  (they  moved  to  Durham  Street  in 
the  autumn  of  '96, 1  believe)  and,  turning  towards  home, 
on  the  next  corner,  casually  observed  a  hatless  individ 
ual  sustaining  himself  with  difficulty  against  the  post 
across  the  way.  "There's  a  drunk,"  Van  thought; 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  97 

and  then  something  about  the  figure  drew  him  to  look 
again  with  a  foreboding  interest.  He  stood  still  to 
watch  it.  There  appeared  a  night-watchman  from  one 
of  the  neighboring  apartment  buildings  and  entered 
into  altercation  with  it.  Van  crossed  the  street  quickly 
and  went  up  to  them. 

"G'wan  now,  I  don't  want  to  run  yuh  in/'  the  night- 
watchman  was  saying  benevolently;  "yuh  gotta  git 
a  move  on,  that's  all.  Yuh  can't  stay  aroun'  here,  see  ? 
Don't  yuh  know  where  yuh  b'long?" 

"Hello,  Bob  !"  said  Van  Cleve. 

The  other  stared  at  him  fishily.  Bob  reeked  to 
Heaven ;  his  clothing  exhibited  signs  of  a  recent  ac 
quaintance  with  that  classic  resort  of  the  drunkard, 
the  gutter ;  his  hat  had  fallen  off,  and  his  face  showed 
grimy  and  discolored  in  the  lamplight.  He  smiled 
vacuously.  "JLo!"  he  said  at  last  thickly;  "'s  oP 
Van  Cleve  !  'Lo,  Van,  ol'  top,  how's  shings  ?" 

"Party  a  friend  o'  yourn?"  inquired  the  night- 
watchman. 

"Yes,  I  know  him,"  said  the  young  man,  surveying 
Robert  disgustedly. 

"Know  where  he  lives?"  the  night-watchman  sug 
gested;  "I  been  tryin'  to  git  it  out  o'  him.  I  hadn't 
otter  leave  m'  job,  or  I'd  took  him  to  his  home,  'f  he's 
got  any." 

"It's  all  right.  I'll  attend  to  him,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
shortly.  He  got  hold  of  Bob  by  the  arm.  "Here,  I'm 
going  to  take  you  home,  Bob,"  he  said.  "Look  out, 
you'll  fall.  That's  not  your  hat.  Here,  don't  you 
try  to  get  it,  I'll  get  it  -  The  night-watchman, 
however,  had  already  captured  it  out  of  a  pool  of  half- 
frozen  slush ;  he  rammed  out  the  dents  in  the  crown 
with  his  fist,  gave  it  a  wipe  with  a  bandanna,  and  put 
it  back  with  some  nicety  on  the  head  of  its  owner. 

"All  right  now,  sport !"  said  he,  falling  back  a  step ; 
and  then  shook  his  head  to  observe  Van  Cleve's  manner 


98  VAN   CLEVE: 

with  the  drunken  man.  "Careful,  mister!  Yuh 
wanter  handle  'em  real  easy/'  he  warned,  as  Van 
Cleve  started  to  march  the  other  away ;  l  i  they're 
kinder  hard  to  manage,  if  they  git  soured  at  yuh, 
y'know!" 

"I'm  not  drunk  —  s'pose  you  shink  I'm  drunk!" 
said  Bob,  indignantly.  He  held  back.  "I  do'  wanna 
g'home  yety  Van  —  not  yet.  Dammit,  Van,  can't 
y'unnerstan',  ol'  fellow  ?  I  do'  wanna  go  home  shee 
Lorrie  -  '  all  at  once  he  began  to  blubber  feebly. 
"Lome's  bes'  girl  ever  was  —  bes'  sister  —  ain't 
she  bes'  sister  ever  was,  Van  ?" 

"You've  got  to  go  home,  you  know,  Bob,"  said  Van 
Cleve,  urging  him  along ;  "  come  on,  now.  It's  all  right  ; 
Lorrie  won't  know.  We'll  get  in  without  her  knowing — 
I  hope  to  God  !"  he  added  to  himself  wretchedly.  He 
had  seen  men  drunk  before ;  had  laughed  at  them  many 
times  on  the  stage  and  elsewhere;  had  probably  once 
in  his  life,  himself,  taken  quite  as  much  strong  drink  as 
was  good  for  him,  like  more  than  one  temperate  and 
sensible  young  man.  So  now  he  was  not  shocked ; 
Bob  was  Bob,  and,  whatever  he  did,  immutably  his 
friend ;  but  an  impatient  anger  and  distress  over 
whelmed  Van  Cleve  at  the  thought  of  Lorrie.  He  got 
Bob  home  somehow ;  it  was  a  sorry  but  after  all  not 
so  very  difficult  a  task.  The  unlucky  young  fellow's 
natural  gentleness  and  tractability  survived  even  in  this 
degrading  defeat.  Wine  in,  truth  out ;  but  that  enemy 
could  bring  nothing  brutal  or  obscene  to  the  surface  of 
Bob's  mind ;  its  shallow  waters  were  at  least  clear. 
Van  got  him  home  somehow,  protesting,  plaintively 
apologetic,  spasmodically  gay,  and  got  him  up  into  the 
porch  with  as  little  scuffling  and  noise  as  was  possi 
ble.  The  house  was  dark.  "They're  all  asleep  !"  Van 
thought  in  relief ;  and  succeeded  in  keeping  Bob  quiet 
while  he  went  through  his  pockets  for  his  night-key. 
Before  he  could  find  it,  however,  a  little  light  gleamed 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  99 

over  the  transom,  the  door  opened  almost  soundlessly, 
and  Lorrie  stood  there. 

She  had  a  glass  hand  lamp  and  held  it  up,  gazing 
around  it  into  the  dark ;  she  seemed  unnaturally  tall  in 
a  white  wrapper  that  drew  into  folds  about  her  feet ;  her 
long,  dark  hair  divided  in  two  wide  braids  lay  smoothly 
on  either  side  of  her  face  and  down  over  her  breast. 
The  young  man  was  reminded  startlingly  of  some 
painting  or  image  of  a  madonna  he  had  once  seen, 
long  ago. 

"Is  it  you,  Bob?"  Lorrie  said  in  a  whisper;  "won't 
you  try  not  to  wake  Mother —  Van  Cleve!"  Even  in 
her  surprise,  she  governed  her  voice. 

"I've  brought  him  home,  Lorrie  —  I  —  I  found  him 
on  the  street,"  said  Van,  hanging  his  head.  But  after 
her  first  exclamation,  the  girl  scarcely  seemed  to  take 
account  of  him.  Her  eyes  passed  over  Van  Cleve  and 
fell  anxiously  on  her  brother,  huddled  on  the  old,  rickety 
porch  seat ;  she  came  a  step  out  of  the  doorway,  shiver 
ing  as  the  cold  struck  her,  and  clutching  together  her 
light  draperies. 

"Thank  you  —  I  —  I'm  glad  it  was  you,  Van,"  she 
said  brokenly,  yet  with  a  self-control  that  astonished 
the  young  man ;  he  looked  at  her,  touched  and  reverent, 
as  she  went  on  with  the  same  painful  strength:  "I'm 
glad  it  was  you  —  but  won't  you  —  won't  you  please 
go  away  now  ?  I  can  take  care  of  him  now  he's  home. 
I  can't  go  out  and  find  him  —  I  just  have  to  wait  - 
that's  really  the  —  the  worst  of  it,  you  know.  And  I 
don't  want  Mother  to  know.  If  you'll  just  go  away 
now,  Van  Cleve,  I  can  manage  him.  I'm  afraid  you  - 
you  might  make  some  noise,  and  wake  them  up  —  you're 
not  used  to  it,  you  know,"  said  poor  Lorrie,  simply. 

"I'm  not  going  away,  and  you're  not  going  to  take 
care  of  him,"  said  Van  Cleve  in  his  harshest  manner  — 
though  he,  too,  tried  to  speak  under  his  breath.     He  put 
her  aside,  and  took  Bob  by  the  shoulder.     "Stand  up, 


100  VAN   CLEVE: 

Bob ;  you  know  you  can  stand  up  if  you  try/'  he  com 
manded  savagely. 

"Don'  you  tush  my  sister!"  said  Bob  in  his 
thick  accent.  The  fancied  offence  to  Lorrie  roused 
him  in  an  extraordinary  fashion ;  he  shook  off  the 
other's  grasp,  and  got  upon  his  feet  unaided.  "You 
shan't  talk  that  way  to  Lorrie,  I  don't  care  if  it  is 
you,  Van  !"  he  said  quite  distinctly;  and  then  equally 
unaccountably  slipped  back  to  his  former  state. 
"Leggo  me!  Whash  doin' ?  G'upstairs  m'self,"  he 
asserted,  mumbling,  hiccoughing,  wavering.  Van 
Cleve  seized  and  steadied  him ;  the  lamp  cast  a  shak 
ing  light  over  them  and  over  Lome's  white  face  and 
cold,  trembling  hands;  it  was  a  piece  of  cheap  and 
squalid  tragedy. 

"Please,  Van  Cleve,  I  can  take  care  of  him,  truly —  " 
she  began  again,  imploringly. 

"You  shall  not!"  said  Van,  roughly.  She  obeyed 
him  this  time,  meekly  following  with  the  light  while 
Van  Cleve  propped,  pushed,  and  dragged  the  other  up 
stairs  to  his  own  room,  got  some  of  his  clothes  off  and 
deposited  him  in  the  bed,  where  he  lay  quite  stupid  now, 
and  erelong  sleeping  noisily.  His  two  guardians  went 
cautiously  down  again.  The  Gilbert  family  dog 
had  come  to  look  on,  head  on  one  side,  wrinkling  its 
honest  brow  in  uncomprehending  doggish  curiosity  and 
anxiety;  it  sniffed  at  Van's  hand  inquiringly,  recognized 
him,  and  retired  satisfied  to  its  nightly  bivouac  across 
the  threshold  of  Mrs.  Gilbert's  bedroom.  Lorrie 
stood  with  her  lamp  at  the  door  to  light  the  young 
man's  way  out. 

"What  is  it?  Is  that  you,  Lorrie?  Are  you  sick? 
What  is  the  matter?"  Mrs.  Gilbert  waked  up  suddenly 
and  called.  It  was  a  miracle  she  had  not  waked  sooner. 
Van  Cleve  looked  at  Lorrie,  utterly  disconcerted. 

"Nothing  at  all,  Mother;  nothing's  the  matter," 
she  called  back  pleasantly  and  composedly.  "Dingo 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  i  HIS  FAMIL*  101 

Deemed  to  want  to  get  out,  and  then  when  I  let  him  out, 
he  began  to  scratch  and  whine  and  make  such  a  fuss,  I 
had  to  get  up  and  let  him  in  again." 

"Oh,  I  thought  — that  is-  '  Mrs.  Gilbert  paused; 
there  was  a  moment  of  blank  silence  —  it  was  singularly, 
curiously,  blank  and  silent.  "I  thought  I  heard  some 
body  on  the  stairs  —  I  must  have  been  dreaming,"  said 
Mrs.  Gilbert  with  a  kind  of  hurried  distinctness  and 
emphasis.  "  Never  mind  me,  dearie  —  I  —  I  would 
have  waked  anyhow  -  '  her  voice  ceased  suddenly. 

"  She  doesn't  know,  Van  —  you  see  she  doesn't  know," 
Lorrie  whispered;  it  was  an  appeal.  Van  Cleve 
heard  the  two  women  lying  to  each  other  with  wonder 
and  pity.  As  he  looked  at  Lorrie,  on  a  sudden,  for  the 
first  time,  he  saw  her  face  quiver.  She  put  up  her  hands 
to  hide  it,  and  leaned  against  the  wall,  sobbing  —  but 
still  noiselessly.  Van  Cleve  felt  desperately  that  he 
would  give  his  right  hand,  he  would  give  a  year  out  of 
his  life,  to  take  her  to  him  and  comfort  her  —  but  what 
comfort  would  she  get  from  him?  To  go  away  and 
leave  her  in  peace  was  the  greatest  kindness  he  could  do 
her !  He  lingered  an  instant,  helplessly,  dumb ;  even 
without  the  risk  of  detection,  he  would  have  been  at  a 
loss  what  to  say ;  so  they  parted  at  last  without  a  word. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TREATS  OF  SUNDRY  AFFAIRS  OF  THE  HEART 

ALTHOUGH  the  skeleton  in  the  Gilbert  family  closet 
was  by  way  of  being  uncloseted  nowadays,  was  indeed 
rattling  its  joints  and  stalking  abroad  in  the  full  glare 
of  noonday  to  the  horror  of  all  temperate  and  well- 
behaved  persons,  there  was  at  least  one  who  remained 
unaffected  by  the  spectacle.  The  young  lady  whom 
people  generally  referred  to  as  "that  Jameson  girl/'  or 
"that  little  Paula  Jameson  "  must  have  known  as  much 
about  Bob's  miserable  failing  as  anybody ;  but,  drunk  or 
sober,  good  or  bad,  weak  or  strong,  it  was  apparently  all 
one  to  her.  She  continued  to  make  what  the  other  girls 
vowed  was  a  "dead  set"  at  the  young  man.  It  was 
impossible  to  believe,  according  to  them,  that  she 
haunted  the  house  so  persistently  out  of  fondness  for 
Lorrie.  Everybody  knew  (they  said)  that  she  had  begun 
her  attentions  to  Bob's  sister  long  ago  in  the  hope  of 
"getting  in";  and  Lorrie  was  so  dear  and  sweet  she 
never  had  the  heart  to  get  rid  of  her,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  fact  that  that  would  have  been  a  job,  because  Paula 
was  too  thick-skinned  to  take  a  hint  or  feel  any  or 
dinary  rebuff.  But  now  !  —  it  was  plain  to  be  seen  that 
she  was  after  Bob.  And  she  would  probably  get  him, 
too  —  he  was  a  good  deal  taken  with  her.  Mercy, 
nobody  else  wanted  him ;  still,  it  was  rather  a  pity,  he 
was  so  nice  when  —  when  he  was  all  right,  you  know. 
The  family  were  all  so  nice,  and  Lorrie  was  lovely, 
and  they  would  hate  such  a  connection,  though  of  course 
they  would  stand  it  on  Bob's  account. 

102 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  103 

What  was  it  that  was  the  matter  with  Miss  Jameson, 
then?  Merely  her  manners?  Our  society  is  not 
snobbish  ;  doubtless  there  were  people  in  it  no  brighter 
nor  better-bred  than  Paula  Jameson,  and  certainly 
not  nearly  so  pretty ;  but  it  would  not  swallow  her ;  it 
would  have  none  of  her  nor  her  mother.  Yet  they  were 
really  inoffensive  creatures.  Mrs.  Jameson,  to  whom 
at  times  the  girl  showed  a  somewhat  disquieting  resem 
blance,  was  a  large,  vivid,  extraordinarily  corseted  and 
high-heeled  lady,  about  forty-five  years  of  age,  with  the 
same  kind  of  auburn  hair  as  her  daughter's,  invariably 
arranged  in  the  latest  fashion,  or  even  a  little  in  advance 
of  the  latest  fashion;  and  with  a  fondness  for  perfum 
ery  and  for  entire  toilettes  in  shades  of  purple,  lavender, 
heliotrope,  and  so  on,  parasols,  gloves,  silk  stockings, 
suede  shoes,  all  elaborately  matched,  wherewith  she 
might  frequently  be  seen  upon  the  streets,  bearing  her 
self  with  a  kind  of  languid  chic  —  the  word  she  her 
self  would  have  used.  She  was  a  widow ;  and  the  late 
Mr.  Jameson  —  Levi  B.  Jameson,  Plumbers'  Supplies, 
Sewer-Pipe,  Metal  Roofing,  Etc.  —  having  got  together 
a  reasonable  fortune  in  his  time,  she  and  Paula  were 
very  comfortably  off,  or  would  have  been  if  the  taste 
for  purple  costumes  and  similar  tastes  in  which  Paula 
also  had  been  trained  had  not  kept  them  in  perpetual  hot 
water,  spending  and  retrenching  with  an  equal  thriftless- 
ness.  They  lived  at  ''private"  hotels  or  fashionable 
boarding-houses  here  and  there,  and  went  to  the  theatre 
a  great  deal;  idling  through  the  rest  of  their  time  in 
shopping,  or  having  their  hands  manicured  and  hair 
dressed,  or  giving  the  French  bulldog  his  bath,  or 
yawning  over  the  last  lurid  novel  with  a  box  of  choco 
late  drops  in  the  rocking-chairs  of  the  roof  garden  or 
lounge.  Their  circle  of  acquaintances  was  not  large ; 
Mrs.  Jameson  had  no  social  traditions  nor  aspirations,  no 
hobbies,  no  recreations,  no  aim  in  life  at  all  except  to  be 
the  best-dressed  woman  in  any  assembly,  to  keep  her 


104  VAN   CLEVE: 

weight  down  to  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  pounds,  and 
never  to  miss  her  tri- weekly  " facial"  at  the  beauty 
parlors  she  patronized.  Paula  had  never  seen  her 
mother  do  anything,  had  never  known  her  to  be  in 
terested  in  anything  but  the  above  subjects,  although, 
to  do  her  justice,  Mrs.  Jameson  was  fond  of  her  daughter 
and  gave  almost  as  much  attention  to  Paula's  wardrobe 
and  figure  and  complexion  as  to  her  own.  It  was  not 
strange  that  the  girl  could  conceive  of  no  different  nor 
more  elevated  an  existence ;  that  is  a  rare  character,  the 
sages  tell  us,  that  can  be  superior  to  environment,  and 
Paula  was  not  a  rare  character ;  she  was  not  especially 
endowed  in  any  way,  except  physically.  She  had  been 
curled,  scented,  arrayed  in  slippers  too  tight,  and  sashes 
too  wide,  and  hats  too  big,  like  a  little  show-window 
puppet,  ever  since  she  could  remember;  had  been 
kissed  and  petted  and  admired  by  other  hotel-dwelling 
women,  and  noticed  and  flattered  by  men  until  it  was 
natural  that  the  pretty  red-gold  head  should  be  occupied 
with  Paula's  self,  with  her  beauty  and  her  " style"  arid, 
above  all,  her  irresistible  attraction  for  every  trousered 
human  being  she  saw,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else. 
Why  not?  She  was  attractive.  She  had  no  talents 
nor  accomplishments;  but  she  had  been  to  two  or 
three  of  the  most  select  and  fashionable  schools ;  she 
spent  infinite  pains  on  her  dress  with  charming  results ; 
she  could  not  talk  at  all,  but  she  could  always  look,  as 
Bob  Gilbert  himself  had  said;  she  was  very  pliable 
and  good-tempered,  ready  to  laugh  at  any  joke  she 
could  understand,  and  to  enter  into  any  plan ;  what 
more  could  have  been  asked  of  her,  or  why  should  she 
not  have  been  satisfied  with  herself  ? 

Why  little  Miss  Paula  should  have  taken  the  fancy 
she  apparently  did  to  the  Professor's  daughter,  who 
made  her  own  clothes  and  trimmed  her  own  hats,  who 
could  cook  a  dinner  or  play  a  two  step  with  equal 
facility,  who  had  ten  times  more  sense  and  a  hundred 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  105 

times  more  heart,  who  was  five  years  older,  and  more 
mature  at  twenty-three  than  Paula  would  be  at  fifty  — 
why  the  girl  should  have  taken  such  a  liking  to  Lorrie, 
it  was  for  a  long  while  impossible  for  the  latter  to  guess. 
But  Miss  Jameson  attached  herself  to  Lorrie  with  the 
funny  perseverance  of  a  home-seeking  kitten,  would 
come  to  see  her,  would  write  her  notes  by  the  ream,  and 
telephone  by  the  hour,  if  she  had  been  allowed  this  last 
indulgence.  Lorrie  was  too  humane  to  throw  her  off, 
which,  besides,  as  the  other  girls  hinted,  was  no  easy 
matter ;  and  Miss  Gilbert  grew  finally  to  feel  a  sort  of 
maternal  fondness  and  a  certain  responsibility  for  the 
childish,  pretty  young  creature,  even  after  the  other 
had  ingenuously  and  quite  unconsciously  revealed  the 
secret  of  her  devotion.  "It's  so  nice  for  you  having  a 
brother  —  a  grown-up  one,  I  mean  —  like  Bob,  isn't 
it  ?  There're  always  such  a  lot  of  men  coming  to  the 
house  all  the  time  —  so  nice !  You  have  ever  so  many 
more  men  than  any  of  the  other  girls.  It's  just  lovely 
here  —  there's  always  somebody!"  she  said  one  day, 
and  wondered  why  Lorrie,  after  a  moment's  meditative 
pause,  looking  at  her  oddly  the  while,  suddenly  broke 
into  a  little  laugh ;  all  her  face  twinkled ;  she  laughed 
and  laughed. 

"  What's  funny  ?  What's  the  joke  ?  "  demanded  Paula, 
lazily  interested;  she  picked  up  a  hand-glass,  and 
moved  closer  to  the  window. 

1  i '  The  people  that  walked  in  darkness  have  seen  a 
great  light!"  said  Lorrie,  profanely,  reducing  her 
expression  to  one  of  prodigious  gravity  on  the  instant ; 
and  Paula  at  the  bureau,  painstakingly  examining  a 
minute  speck  on  the  right  side  of  her  chin  which  she 
dreaded  might  be  the  beginning  of  a  pimple,  did  not 
attempt  to  follow  her  friend's  abrupt  changes  of  mood. 
Besides,  Lorrie,  like  nearly  everybody  else,  was  forever 
making  speeches  which  Paula  found  it  too  fatiguing  even 
to  pretend  to  understand. 


106  VAN   CLEVE: 

For  my  own  part,  I  should  not  have  fancied  Miss 
Jameson  much,  after  this  naive  revelation  of  character. 
To  run  after  and  cultivate  another  girl,  because  she 
happens  to  be  popular  with  the  young  men  of  her  circle  ! 
There  is  a  kind  of  silly  calculation  about  it.  But 
Lorrie  was  only  amused ;  she  took  a  mischievous  delight 
in  drawing  Paula  out,  and  would  repeat  their  conversa 
tions  to  her  mother  afterwards,  fetching  a  smile  even 
to  the  older  woman's  troubled  face.  They  were  kind- 
hearted  ;  they  would  say  "Poor  Paula  !"  to  each  other 
in  the  very  midst  of  their  laughter. 

"Of  course  all  the  men  aren't  nice;  but  it's  nice  to 
have  them  come  to  call  on  you,  anyhow  — "  (thus  Miss 
Jameson,  according  to  Lome's  report)  —  "I'd  feel 
awfully  if  I  never  had  a  caller.  There's  a  girl  at  The 
Alt.-  (the  young  lady's  abbreviation  of  "The 
Altamont,"  that  being  the  name  of  the  caravanserai 
which  sheltered  the  Jamesons  at  the  moment)  " —  that 
I  don't  believe  has  ever  had  a  bit  of  attention  in  her 
life  —  not  the  least,  little  tiny  scrap!  I'd  feel  awfully 
in  her  place,  wouldn't  you  ?  Momma  —  I  mean  Mama 
-  Mama  says  any  girl  that  hasn't  had  a  proposal  before 
she's  twenty  is  &  freak.  I  said  to  her,  'Well,  that  lets 
me  out !  I'm  safe,  anyhow  ! '  Momma  —  Mama  simply 
screamed ;  she's  been  telling  everybody  in  the  hotel. 
I  don't  care.  It's  true,  you  know.  I'm  going  on 
twenty-three,  and  I've  had  four  —  I  mean  not  counting 
college  boys  when  you're  away  in  the  summer  and  all 
that.  I  never  count  them,  though  lots  of  girls  do.  I 
don't  care  for  boys  —  I'd  rather  have  men.  One  of 
mine  has  stacks  of  money ;  he's  in  the  shoe  business  in 
Springfield,  Massachusetts,  and  used  to  come  around 
and  stop  at  The  Alt.  regularly  four  times  a  year,  getting 
up  trade  at  the  stores,  you  know.  He  don't  come  any 
more,  though,  since  I  turned  him  down.  I  don't 
think  the  shoe  business  would  be  very  stylish,  somehow, 
do  you?  It  wouldn't  be  like  saying  your  husband 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  107 

was  president  of  a  bank,  or  something.  He  did  give 
me  lovely  things,  though."  She  sighed  reminiscently. 
"He  gave  me  my  silver  toilet-set  —  all  except  those 
two  big  cologne  bottles  with  the  silver  deposit  on 
cut  glass.  Another  man  gave  me  those.  I  priced 
them  afterwards  at  Dormer's  and  they're  fifteen 
dollars  apiece.  Isn't  it  funny  how  men  just  love 
to  spend  money  on  you?  I  had  a  fellow  once  that 
gave  me  the  cutest  little  watch  —  one  of  the  real  little 
ones,  not  any  bigger  than  that,  you  know,  dark 
blue  enamel  with  pearls  all  over  it,  and  a  little  flure- 
de-lee  pin  to  match  —  too  cute  for  anything.  I'll 
show  it  to  you  some  time  when  you're  over.  I  wish 
you'd  come  over ;  you  always  say  you  will,  and  then 
you  never  do." 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  you  took  those  men's  pres 
ents?"  ejaculated  Lorrie,  ungrammatically. 

"Why,  yes.  Why?  Wouldn't  you  have?  They're 
lovely  things  —  they're  all  real,  you  know,  the  pearls  on 
the  watch  and  everything.  I  wouldn't  have  'em  a 
minute  if  they  weren't.  I  hate  anything  common.  But 
wouldn't  you  have  taken  them  ?  The  men  were  simply 
gone  about  me,  you  know,  just  crazy." 

"Mother  wouldn't  have  let  me,"  Lorrie  stammered, 
trying,  in  her  quick  humanity,  to  make  some  explana 
tion  that  might  not  hurt  the  other's  feelings.  But 
Paula  looked  at  her  with  no  feeling  more  pronounced 
than  surprise. 

"I  should  think  you'd  take  'em,  and  just  not  tell  her," 
she  remarked ;  "you  can  always  say  you  saved  up  and 
bought  'em  out  of  your  own  money,  or  some  girl  in 
Seattle  or  somewhere  'way  off  sent  'em  to  you. 
Momma  don't  know  about  all  my  things.  I  like  to 
have  presents  from  men.  I  can't  see  there's  any  harm 
in  it."  A  curious  hardness  came  into  her  face;  she 
eyed  the  older  girl  with  something  like  cunning,  an 
expression  as  uncanny  on  Paula's  soft,  dimpled  features 


108  VAN   CLEVE: 

as  it  would  have  been  on  a  five-year-old  baby's.    ' '  Didn't 
anybody  ever  give  you  anything?" 

"No,"  said  Lorrie,  shortly,  annoyed. 

"Pooh,  you  just  won't  tell.  I  think  you  might  me, 
though  —  I  wouldn't  give  you  away.  You've  had 
ever  so  many  men  awfully  gone  on  you,  everybody  says. 
I  love  to  hear  them  talk  and  go  on  that  soft  way,  don't 
you  ?  I  think  you  might  tell  me.  There's  V.  C.  K.  - 
you  know  who  I  mean  —  you  needn't  pretend  you 
don't." 

"V.  C.  K.  ?  Oh!"  said  Lorrie,  crimsoning;  "please 
don't  say  things  like  that,  Paula.  He's  just  Bob's 
friend.  It  doesn't  seem  fair  to  a  man  to  —  to  talk  like 
that.  Even  if  it  were  true,  it  sounds  —  it  sounds  — " 
she  stopped,  hampered  for  words  the  other  could  under 
stand  without  offence ;  she  could  not  say  to  Paula  that 
it  sounded  cheap  and  common.  "I  wouldn't  do  it, 
if  I  were  you,"  Lorrie  said  finally. 

"Seems  to  me  there's  a  lot  of  things  you  won't  do," 
Paula  said  suspiciously.  "Everybody  knows  it  — 
about  Van  Kendrick,  I  mean.  He  comes  here  to  see  you. 
He  isn't  such  a  tremendously  good  friend  of  Bob's ; 
they  don't  go  around  together  nearly  as  much  as  they 
used  to." 

Lorrie  did  not  answer ;  her  face  clouded  unhappily. 

"Well,  if  he  hasn't  ever  come  right  out  and  asked  you, 
I  suppose  it's  because  of  his  family,"  suggested  Paula, 
comfortingly,  misreading  the  other's  silence  and  look 
of  trouble;  "I  suppose  he  thinks  he  can't  afford  to  get 
married.  I  don't  like  him  much,  anyhow.  He's 
always  so  —  so  —  well,  so  grumpy  and  grouchy,  you 
know.  He  always  shoots  right  by  you  on  the  street, 
and  just  grabs  off  his  hat  and  jabs  it  on  again  as  if  he 
was  afraid  for  his  life  to  stop  and  speak  for  fear  he'd 
have  to  ask  you  to  go  to  lunch  with  him,  or  pay  your 
car  fare  or  something.  He  never  does  offer  to  take  a 
person  anywhere,  to  the  theatre  or  anything.  He's 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  109 

awfully  stingy.  Oh,  I  don't  suppose  he's  that  way 
with  you.  But  I  just  hope  you  won't  take  him, 
Lorrie." 

"I  told  you  there  wasn't  any  question  of  that," 
said  Lorrie,  not  too  amiably.  She  was  tired  of  listening 
to  all  this  dull,  distasteful  stuff.  If  she  was  not  at  all 
in  love  with  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  she  still  thought 
him  a  deal  above  Miss  Jameson's  criticism.  Paula  only 
shrugged,  and  turned  her  attention  to  her  ringer  nails. 
After  a  while  she  said,  without  raising  her  eyes, 
"Mr.  Cortwright's  getting  to  come  pretty  often,  too, 
isn't  he?" 

"Not  any  more  than  anybody  else,"  said  Lorrie; 
and  now  she,  too,  kept  her  eyes  down. 

"I  thought  he  seemed  to  be  here  every  time  I  hap 
pen  to  come  over  —  in  the  evenings,  you  know,"  said 
Paula,  who  indeed  "happened"  to  come  over  in  the 
evenings  two  or  three  times  a  week  with  striking  regu 
larity  ;  there  crept  into  her  eyes  that  same  look  of 
babyish  sharpness  that  had  showed  there  a  while  before. 
"I  noticed  it  because  two  or  three  times  he's  taken  me 
home,"  she  said  explanatorily. 

"Yes?"  said  Lorrie,  engrossed  in  her  embroidery. 

"Why,  yes,  don't  you  remember  ?  It  was  when  Bob 
was  out  or  sick,  so  he  couldn't,"  said  Paula,  more 
explanatorily  still.  She  went  on  quickly  with  a  good 
deal  of  emphasis :  "I  just  said  to  myself,  '  Well,  if  I'd 
known  you  were  going  to  be  here,  I  'd  have  stayed  home ! 7 
You  know  I  don't  like  Mr.  Cortwright,  either,  Lorrie — I 
don't  like  him  a  little  bit !"  She  paused,  slightly  out  of 
breath,  glancing  narrowly  into  her  companion's  face ; 
but  Lome's  eyes  were  still  lowered,  and  at  the  moment 
she  was  matching  two  skeins  of  pink  floss  with  elaborate 
care,  so  that  if  Miss  Jameson  had  counted  on  these 
statements  making  some  visible  impression,  she  was 
disappointed.  "I  just  hate  him !"  she  announced  vig 
orously. 


110  VAN   CLEVE: 

"  Oh,  poor  Mr.  Cortwright !"  said  Lorrie,  with  a  kind 
of  absent-minded  laugh,  deciding  on  the  darker  shade  at 
last. 

The  other  girl  scrutinized  her  silently.  "Do  you 
like  him?"  she  suddenly  demanded. 

"Oh,  yes.  He's  always  been  very  nice  to  Bob,  you 
know/'  said  Lorrie,  maintaining  her  light  tone,  but 
furious  inwardly  to  feel  the  red  coming  into  her 
cheeks.  It  was  ridiculous  to  be  dragging  in  Bob  this 
way  to  account  for  every  man  that  came  to  the  house ; 
she  began  to  laugh,  a  little  nervously. 

Paula  looked  at  her  again  uncertainly.  "Well,  I 
hate  him  !"  she  repeated ;  "I've  never  even  asked  him 
in  when  we  got  to  The  Alt.,  or  asked  him  to  call,  or  any 
thing."  Again  Paula  considered,  or,  at  least,  had  the 
appearance  of  considering,  though  it  would  have  been 
hard  to  believe  that  any  operation  of  so  much  conse 
quence  was  going  on  behind  that  lovely,  inanimate 
mask.  "He  don't  like  me,  either  —  Mr.  Cortwright 
just  hates  me,  I  know  it,"  she  said,  eying  Lorrie  ex 
pectantly.  "He  just  took  me  home  those  times 
because  he  had  to."  Lorrie  made  an  inarticulate 
sound  of  dissent,  and  went  on  with  her  fancy  work 
assiduously. 

"Does  he  ever  say  anything  to  you  about  me  ?  "  asked 
Paula. 

"Why,  yes  —  no  —  I  don't  know  —  sometimes  —  I 
suppose  we  talk  about  everybody  once  in  a  while  - 
said  Lorrie,  rather  confusedly.  Mr.  Cortwright  had 
not  been  overcomplimentary  in  his  references  to  Miss 
Jameson.  But  the  latter,  who  candidly  liked  to  occupy 
the  limelight  and  the  centre  of  the  stage,  and  in  general 
would  rather  have  heard  that  she  had  been  severely 
reviewed,  even  lacerated,  by  the  gossips,  than  that  they 
had  passed  her  over  with  no  notice  at  all,  nevertheless 
looked  not  disturbed  at  the  neglect  Lorrie  implied. 

"Mr.  Cortwright  don't  like  me,"  she  insisted  again. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  111 

According  to  legend,  two  pairs  of  ears  should  have 
been  burning  pretty  smartly  while  the  above  conver 
sation  went  on ;  we  may  imagine  that  the  first  gentle 
man-  under  discussion,  could  he  have  overheard  Miss 
Jameson,  would  have  dismissed  her  estimate  of  his 
character  easily  enough,  however  angered  or  annoyed 
by  the  rest  of  the  discourse.  Van  Cleve  was  not  of  a 
temper  to  be  much  ruffled  by  the  accusation  of  stinginess 
and  rudeness.  Very  likely  it  was  near  the  truth; 
and  he  himself  might  have  explained  that  he  didn't  have 
any  time  for  attentions  to  girls,  and  his  money  came 
too  hard  to  be  spent  plentifully.  He  had  a  use  for  every 
dollar;  and  by  Somethingquitestrong,  if  that  young 
lady  had  ever  made  a  dollar,  she'd  think  differently ! 
Also  he  would  have  said  —  with  a  red  face  —  that  that 
was  all  rot  about  himself  and  Miss  Gilbert.  As  for 
Cortwright,  the  fact  is,  "poor  Paula"  had  hit  upon  the 
truth  itself  in  those. last  remarks  of  hers,  for  he  had 
confessed  as  much  to  Lorrie  !  The  girl  bored  him  to 
death,  he  had  said  with  great  plainness  and  energy. 
Pretty,  of  course,  but  there  was  absolutely  nothing 
to  her !  He  did  wish  she'd  give  up  this  running  after 
Bob,  and  let  the  house  alone.  He,  too,  spoke  of  the 
times  he  had  been  obliged  to  take  her  home  —  he 
couldn't  get  out  of  it,  you  know  —  didn't  want  to  be 
rude,  but  really  — !  He  was  lightly  and  humorously 
eloquent  on  the  subject  of  Miss  Jameson. 

"I  think  you  are  a  little  hard  on  poor  Paula," 
Lorrie  remonstrated,  coming  to  the  defence  more 
out  of  sex  loyalty  than  from  any  feeling  for  the 
other  girl.  "You  ought  to  make  allowances  for  the 
way  she's  been  brought  up.  It's  perfectly  pathetic 
when  you  stop  to  think  about  it.  No  real  home,  and 
no  real  mother  - 

"What!  No  mother?  Oh,  come  now,  Miss  Gilbert, 
you  surely  know  Mrs.  Jameson,  don't  you?  You've 
seen  her,  anyway  ?  Ah,  I  see,  that's  it !  You  do 


112  VAN   CLEVE: 

know  Mrs.  Jameson  !"  said  the  gentleman,  meaningly, 
with  a  lazy  laugh. 

"I  didn't  mean  to  say  that — I  didn't  say  that  exactly. 
I  meant  her  mother  doesn't  —  isn't  —  well,  she's  not 
like  some  mothers,  you  know,"  said  Lorrie,  lamely, 
between  her  habitual  desire  to  be  charitable,  and  a 
strong  disapproval  of  Mrs.  Jameson.  Cortwright 
understood  her  and  laughed  again. 

"Mrs.  Jameson  isn't  much  like  your  kind  of  mother," 
he  said ;  and  added,  "  there  aren't  many  like  you  among 
the  daughters,  either,  for  that  matter,"  with  the  faintly 
caressing  emphasis  of  which  he  had  the  secret.  It  made 
Lome's  face  grow  warm  even  in  the  dark,  as  they  sat 
on  the  porch  ©f  a  midsummer  night.  They  were  sitting 
in  their  customary  positions ;  that  is,  Lorrie  leaning 
back  against  the  pillar,  with  her  white  skirts  flowing 
down,  and  her  small,  capable  hands  for  once  idle  in  her 
lap ;  and  Cortwright,  on  the  step  below,  bending 
towards  her  in  one  of  those  cavalier  attitudes  into  which 
he  fell  more  or  less  unaffectedly;  he  was  naturally 
graceful  in  his  movements ;  and  the  sword  and  mantle 
of  the  cavalier  day  would  have  set  upon  him  as  suitably 
as  its  light  and  swaggering  morals.  Sometimes  his 
hand  or  foot  touched  hers  accidentally  —  or  tentatively ; 
but  as  to  any  of  the  sentimental  advances  which  he  was 
reported  to  practise,  the  young  man  seldom  attempted 
them  with  Lorrie  Gilbert.  The  fellow  that  tried  to 
kiss  her  would  get  his,  he  sometimes  thought  in  his 
profanely  modern  speech;  and  was  startled  to  feel  a 
thrill  of  anger,  resentment,  jealous  desire,  dart  through 
him  at  this  purely  speculative  person's  act.  He  was 
beginning  to  be  much  more  in  earnest  than  he  had  ever 
dreamed  of  being ;  certainly  than  he  had  ever  been  before 
with  any  of  the  women  he  had  encountered  throughout 
his  easy,  conquering,  not  too  scrupulous,  career.  Also 
he  was  perfectly  well  aware  that  rumor  bracketed 
their  two  names;  and  let  it  go  undenied,  keeping 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  113 

silence  but  smiling  in  a  style  calculated  to  support 
the  talk,  if  anything.  In  reality,  it  at  once  flattered 
and  disconcerted  him;  he  was  not  sure  that  he  was 
so  much  in  earnest  as  all  that,  he  said  to  himself,  half 
complacent  and  half  alarmed.  Getting  married,  you 
know  —  !  And,  anyhow,  what  did  she  think  ?  What 
did  she  think  ?  For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  a  healthy 
self -distrust  invaded  him.  The  very  candor  of  Lome's 
liking  at  once  defeated  and  spurred  him  on.  And 
now,  as  he  sat  beside  her,  sensing,  as  often  before,  to 
his  own  wonder  and  enchantment,  an  ineffable  comfort, 
restfulness,  and  content,  physical,  spiritual,  he  did  not 
know  which,  in  her  presence  and  nearness,  a  sudden 
small  anxiety  overtook  him. 

"I  imagine  Miss  Jameson  tells  you  all  about  her  love- 
affairs  —  what  he  said  and  what  she  said,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it,"  he  said  ;  " she's  had  a  good  many,  probably." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Lorrie,  indulgently ;  and  she  laughed. 
Cortwright  was  relieved  at  her  tone  and  laughter. 
Even  if  Paula  —  even  if  any  girl,  hadn't  enough  sense 
to  keep  her  mouth  shut,  she  would  have  enough  cun 
ning,  he  thought,  secure  in  his  knowledge  of  the  sex. 

"  After  all,  it  would  be  a  pretty  good  thing  if  Bob 
fell  in  love  with  her.  It  would  do  him  good  to  get  his 
mind  set  on  some  girl,  I  believe,"  he  said,  in  a  kind, 
elder-brother  fashion  that  touched  Lorrie  deeply. 

" That's  what  I've  often  thought,"  she  said  impul 
sively;  "that's  what  I've  often  longed  for.  Mother 
and  I  —  we  can't  do  much  —  he's  too  used  to  us  —  a 
man  doesn't  seem  to  care  much  what  his  mother  and 
sisters  think  about  him.  He  knows  they're  going  to 
love  him,  anyhow.  But  if  Bob  would  only  get  to  caring 
for  some  girl  —  Paula  or  anybody  —  if  he'd  only  - 
instead  of  -  '  Lome's  voice  failed ;  all  the  pain  and 
worry  of  these  past  few  months  when  things,  already 
so  bad,  seemed  to  be  getting  so  much  worse,  suddenly 
knotted  together  in  her  throat.  She  turned  her  face 


114  VAN   CLEVE: 

away,  sternly  resolved  to  control  herself.  "I'm  getting 
silly  and  hysterical,  laughing  one  minute  and  wanting 
to  cry  the  next!"  she  thought  impatiently.  Indeed, 
she  had  been  under  a  hard  strain  for  some  time  now. 

The  man,  who  knew  well  enough  what  the  trouble  was, 
looked  at  her  and  then  down,  a  little  shamed,  a  little 
humbled.  Bob's  misbehavior  surely  could  not  be  laid 
to  his  door;  but  a  sharp  regret  stung  him.  "Men 
don't  deserve  to  have  sisters  and  mothers  and  —  and 
wives!"  he  declared  huskily,  not  conscious  of  the 
irrelevance  of  the  words  until  they  were  out ;  and  both 
of  them  were  awkwardly  silent  an  instant.  Cortwright 
looked  into  her  face  again,  and  saw  that  the  brown 
eyes  shone  suspiciously  in  the  moonlight,  as  with  un 
shed  tears.  He  gave  an  exclamation. 

"Don't  do  that,  Lorrie,  don't!  I  —  I  mean,  don't 
worry  about  Bob  so!"  he  stammered,  moved  by  a 
genuine,  self-forgetful  sympathy  and  pity.  He  took 
her  hand ;  he  kept  on  with  reassuring  and  comforting 
words.  "Bob's  all  right  —  he's  going  to  come  out  all 
right.  He'll  get  over  this  running  around,  you  know, 
and  —  er  —  and  coming  in  late  at  night,  and  —  er  — 
and  all  that.  Why,  there're  lots  of  fellows  worse  than 
Bob—" 

"I  know  that,  Mr.  Cortwright,  but  that  doesn't 
make  it  any  easier, ' '  said  Lorrie,  brokenly ;  she  swallowed 
hard,  and  went  on  without  looking  at  him.  "I'm  sure 
Bob  wouldn't  —  wouldn't  do  anything  wrong,  even 
when  he's  —  when  he's  that  way,  you  know.  But  it's 
been  so  long  now  it  seems  as  if  maybe  he  never  would 
get  over  it.  That's  what  frightens  me.  It  began 
when  he  was  only  a  little  boy;  he  used  to  drink  the 
peach-brandy.  Sometimes  he  drank  it  all  up.  When 
I  found  out,  I  never  told  Mother,  and  I  never  said  a 
word  to  him.  I'd  go  and  fill  the  jug  up  with  syrup. 
I  suppose  it  was  wrong,  but  I  —  I  didn't  know  any 
better.  To  this  day,  I  don't  know  whether  Mother 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  115 

knows  or  not.  I  should  just  as  lief  stick  the  carving- 
knife  into  her  as  ask  —  or  tell  her.  She  might  think  it 
was  her  fault  because  of  having  the  peach-brandy 
around,  you  see  — '  She  drew  her  hand  away  quickly ; 
she  was  frightened  at  her  own  loss  of  self-control, 
frightened  at  her  sudden  longing  to  cry  her  troubles 
out  on  the  young  man's  shoulder. 

"Oh  no,  no,  don't  get  to  thinking  things  like  that. 
That's  morbid,  that's  foolish!"  Cortwright  urged, 
honestly  moved ;  and  none  the  less  because  the  peach- 
brandy  episode  seemed  to  him  an  ordinary  boyish 
crime,  fit  only  to  be  laughed  at ;  its  very  littleness 
touched  him.  "It  isn't  anybody's  fault.  Nearly  all 
men  have  some  kind  of  a  time  Eke  this.  Bob  will 
come  around  all  right.  Why,  he's  a  fine  fellow,  a 
splendid  fellow  —  he's  going  to  be  all  right  -  he 
uttered  these  consolations  with  entire  sincerity,  even 
if,  in  reality,  he  had  no  convictions  about  Bob  what 
ever,  and  would  have  acknowledged  to  another  man 
that  the  outcome  of  young  Gilbert's  career  was  very 
dubious.  He  felt  with  a  strange  tangle  of  emotions, 
surprise,  conceit,  satisfaction,  and  something  as  near 
to  real  tenderness  as  he  could  entertain,  that  this  sad 
business  about  Bob  brought  Lorrie  and  himself  closer 
together  than  a  year  of  visits  and  attentions  and  frank, 
pleasant  intimacies  had  been  able  to  do.  And  now,  as 
always  when  he  was  with  her,  Lorrie  unwittingly 
called  out  all  that  was  best  in  him.  He  was  very 
gentle,  governing  his  impulses  in  honest  respect,  made 
a  great  many  fine  forcible  promises  to  "look  after  Bob," 
to  "see  if  he  couldn't  do  something  with  Bob,"  to  "get 
Bob  to  straighten  up,"  etc. ;  and  went  away  from  her 
at  last  in  a  very  noble,  protecting,  ardent,  and  exalted 
state  of  mind,  highly  unusual  and  agreeable.  He  was 
resolved  to  straighten  up,  not  only  Robert,  but  Philip 
Cortwright,  too.  For  such  a  girl,  a  man  ought  to  be 
willing  to  do  anything  !  He  would  cut  out  that  other 


116  VAN   CLEVE: 

affair  altogether ;  it  would  begin  to  tire  him  pretty  soon, 
anyhow;  he  would  go  on  the  water  wagon  himself, 
drop  the  ponies,  marry  Lorrie,  and  settle  down  !  And 
doubtless  Lorrie  went  upstairs  to  her  room  soothed  and 
sustained  and  full  of  trust  in  him ;  doubtless,  too,  she 
blushed  to  face  herself  in  the  glass  when  she  thought 
of  certain  passages,  certain  intonations  of  "his"  voice, 
certain  expressions  in  "  his  "eyes ;  and  combed  out  and 
braided  her  long,  thick,  waving  crop  of  brown  hair  in 
a  pensive  mood  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  that 
unfortunate  Robert ;  and  maybe  sat  awhile  by  the 
window  with  her  chin  propped  on  her  hands  staring 
and  star-gazing  and  dreaming  while  the  family  snored 
unromantically  all  about  her,  before  she  slipped  into  her 
own  little  bed. 

At  the  same  time,  not  many  squares  away,  another 
acquaintance  of  ours  may  have  been  indulging  in  a 
very  similar  style  of  meditation,  and  surveying  what 
she  could  of  the  night  and  stars  from  the  window  of 
her  bedroom  —  a  stuffy  hotel  bedroom  that  commanded 
a  much  better  view  of  the  rear  roofs  and  fire-escapes 
and  the  windows  of  other  stuffy  bedrooms  than  of 
anything  celestial.  Within  are  odors  of  toilet  waters 
and  stale  roses ;  you  may  hear  a  bell-boy  padding 
along  the  corridor  accompanied  by  a  chinking  of  ice- 
water  pitchers ;  near  at  hand  the  elevator  grinds 
slowly  up,  and  anon  grinds  slowly  down.  The  young 
lady  in  a  heavily  embroidered  lavender  crepe  kimono 
somewhat  too  roomy  for  her  —  it  is  part  of  her  mother's 
wardrobe,  in  fact  —  has  been  stealthily  reading  and 
rereading  a  number  of  little  notes  received  with  sundry 
boxes  of  candy  or  perhaps  with  those  other  more  costly 
" presents"  for  which  she  has  a  weakness;  she  has  by 
heart  every  word  of  those  notes.  They  are  "soft" 
and  sugary  enough  even  for  her  taste,  and  fascinatingly 
seasoned  besides  with  hints  of  mystery,  secrecy,  and 
caution.  This  affair  quite  puts  in  the  shade  the  honest 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  117 

gentleman  of  the  shoe  business  and  others  who  have 
been  vulgarly  plain  and  above  board  about  their  ad 
miration  and  their  hopes !  It  has  progressed  from 
chance  meetings  at  first  to  meetings  that  were  not  by 
any  means  chance,  on  her  part  at  any  rate,  later ;  and 
now  to  risky  little  appointments,  delightful  stolen 
moments,  subtly  planned  encounters  —  exactly  like  a 
play !  Indeed,  was  there  ever  a  finer  figure  for  a 
matinee  hero  seen  on  any  stage  than  the  individual 
signing  himself  hers,  Phil  ? 

Momma  —  no,  deliver  us  !  Mama  calls  crossly  and 
drowsily  from  the  next  room  to  know  what  on  earth 
she  is  doing,  and  why  doesn't  she  go  to  bed  ?  The 
light  is  right  in  the  older  lady's  eyes,  it  appears.  So 
the  younger  springs  up  dutifully  and  turns  it  out; 
and  lies  down ;  and  is  soon  sleeping  sweetly  as  becomes 
her  youth  and  innocence,  and  her  stainless,  untroubled 
conscience. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  INDUSTKIOUS  APPRENTICE 

"THE  rolling  stone  gathers  no  moss/7  and  "The 
setting  hen  never  gets  fat"  are  two  worthy  old  prov 
erbs  not  less  true,  it  would  seem,  for  being  diametri 
cally  contradictory ;  and  liable,  like  most  proverbs,  to 
excite  the  retort  that  everything  depends  on  the  in 
dividual.  For  instance,  there  was  Van  Cleve  Kendrick, 
after  some  five  years  at  the  bank,  as  solid  a  fixture  as 
its  marble  steps  or  safe-deposit  vaults,  the  very  reverse 
of  a  rolling  stone ;  yet  no  supine  and  starveling  setting 
hen,  for  all  that.  On  the  contrary,  the  young  fellow 
was  considered  unusually  active,  shrewd,  self-reliant, 
and  capable ;  his  integrity  was  above  question ;  his 
ability  such  as  to  put  him  "right  in  line  for  promotion," 
according  to  what  people  heard.  Indeed,  the  presi 
dent  of  the  National  Loan,  Mr.  Gebhardt  himself,  was 
the  original  source  of  this  rumor.  He  was  an  enthu 
siastic  man,  a  big,  blond,  fine-looking  man  with  the 
heavy  beard  and  roving,  distant  blue  eyes  of  a  Viking, 
and  when  he  came  out  with  one  of  his  strong  encomiums 
about  "my  young  friendt  Van  Cleef  Kendrick"  in  his 
deep  and  melodious  bass  voice  with  the  faint  German 
accent  which  he  always  betrayed  in  moments  of  earnest 
ness  or  excitement,  the  effect  was  very  impressive  and 
convincing.  But  even  without  Mr.  Gebhardt's  indorse 
ment,  Van  Cleve  would  probably  have  earned  the  same 
reputation.  At  twenty-seven  years  of  age,  Mr.  Ken 
drick  held  eight  shares  in  the  National,  on  which  he 
had  paid  a  third  of  what  he  had  borrowed  to  buy  them  ; 

118 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  119 

he  had  six  hundred  dollars  laid  by ;  he  was  drawing  a 
salary  of  twenty-three  hundred  a  year,  and  making  a 
little  "on  the  side/'  in  the  management  of  various 
small  savings  and  bits  of  real  estate  for  half  a  dozen  or 
more  of  those  same  honest  hucksters,  seamstresses, 
dairymen,  and  so  on  1  whom  he  had  used  to  watch 
coming  in  with  their  deposits  Saturday  nights ;  he  had 
put  his  cousin  Evelyn  through  the  Art  School,  and 
given  her  an  extra  twelvemonth  of  study  in  New  York ; 
he  had  been  supporting  a  family  for  years,  if  not  in 
luxury,  certainly  in  ordinary  comfort.  At  twenty-seven, 
also,  Van's  hair  was  thinning  a  little  on  the  temples, 
there  was  a  hard  line  at  the  corner  of  his  flat,  straight 
mouth,  another  between  his  eyebrows.  Since  he  began 
to  work,  he  had  seldom  had,  and  never  asked  for,  a 
vacation,  even  of  a  week,  even  of  a  day ;  Sundays  and 
holidays  he  looked  upon  as  a  more  or  less  unnecessary 
evil.  There  he  stuck  at  his  desk  or  at  and  about 
kindred  desks  and  offices,  cool,  steady,  briefly  civil, 
ageing  before  his  time,  an  edifying  example  of  American 
thrift  and  industry  —  yet  I  know  one  person,  at  least, 
to  whom  there  was  something  not  far  from  pathetic  in 
the  spectacle.  Youth's  a  stuff  that  can't  endure ;  and 
what  was  Van  Cleve  doing  with  his,  he  who  had  almost 
forgot  how  to  play,  who  took  his  leisure  so  rarely  and 
grudgingly,  who  made  friends  among  men  old  enough 
to  be  his  father,  and  never  looked  at  a  woman  except 
to  get  out  of  her  way  ?  What  was  he  doing  with  these 
beautiful,  unreturning  days,  and  what,  what  would  he 
be  doing  at  sixty  or  seventy-five?  He  was  providing 

1 1  never  quite  understood  how  Van  Cleve  came  to  be  so  well  ac 
quainted  among  these  people ;  but  a  remark  of  my  laundress,  a 
respectable  colored  woman  whom  I  have  employed  for  years,  throws 
some  light  on  the  point.  "Mistah  Kendrick?  Lawzee,  I  knows 
him;  I've  knowed  him  evah  sence  he  was  a  beginnah,  befo'  dey  done 
had  de  trouble  at  de  bank,  yass'm',"  she  said;  "I  used  to  peek 
through  dem  little  gold  wires,  an'  see  him  settin'  there,  figurin',  an' 
dat  young  man  was  p'intedly  so  pernicious  at  his  duties,  it  'tracted 
me,  yass'm'." 


120  VAN    CLEVE: 

against  that  very  time  !  "It's  a  bad  thing  to  be  old," 
he  used  to  say  in  his  dry  and  cold  way;  his  manner 
may  have  inspired  confidence  and  respect,  but  it  was 
never  gracious;  "it's  a  bad  thing  to  be  old,"  says 
Joshua  Van  Cleve's  grandson;  "but  it's  the  worst 
thing  that  can  happen  to  be  poor  and  old  !" 

The  young  man,  with  all  his  harshness,  took  care 
not  to  betray  any  such  opinion  to  his  family,  all  of 
whom,  setting  aside  Evelyn,  were  well  under  way  in 
years ;  if  old  age  would  not  find  them  in  poverty,  that 
was  owing  solely  to  Van  Cleve's  own  efforts, — a  fact, 
however,  of  which  he  never  would  have  dreamed  of 
reminding  them,  even  if  he  himself  had  fully  realized 
it.  He  was  of  the  temper  to  work  hard  and  direct  his 
affairs  with  economy  and  prudence,  without  any  need 
or  incentive  whatever ;  and  it  was  with  a  kind  of 
satirical  patience  that  he  received,  or  rather  endured, 
the  devotion  and  admiration  of  his  domestic  circle. 
"Why,  Grandma,  you've  got  me  down  fine,  haven't 
you?  And  of  course  you're  a  pretty  good  judge  of 
men  at  your  time  of  life  and  with  all  your  ex 
perience!"  he  would  say,  in  reply  to  the  old  lady's 
half -tearful  eulogies:  "I'm  a  hero  and  a  saint,  and 
the  biggest  thing  on  top  of  the  ground.  You  say 
so,  and  you  ought  to  know.  My  services  to  the 
bank  are  invaluable;  I  don't  believe  they  could  find 
more  than  forty  or  fifty  bright  young  men  to  fill  my 
place,  in  case  - 

"Oh,  don't  talk  that  way,  Van!"  cried  his  Aunt 
Myra,  aghast  at  this  suggestion ;  "if  you  should  lose 
your  position  — !"  Her  eyes  roved  wildly  over  the 
pretty,  comfortable  room ;  in  a  trice  she  saw  it  a  garret, 
a  hovel,  an  almshouse,  and  herself  and  Evelyn  starv 
ing  in  rags!  "You  —  you  don't  think  they're  going 
to  discharge  you,  do  you,  Van  Cleve?"  she  said, 
trembling. 

"Why,  not  that  I  know  of.     I  guess  I'll  stay  with 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  121 

the  job  a  while  yet,"  said  Van,  amused,  reading  her 
easily,  perhaps  somewhat  contemptuously ;  he  knew 
his  aunt  to  be  a  sincerely  good  woman,  and  he  supposed 
that  all  good  women  contrived  to  be  not  at  all  self- 
indulgent,  yet  thoroughly  selfish,  after  her  fashion. 
"Don't  fly  off  the  handle  that  way/'  he  said;  "I'll 
always  manage  to  take  care  of  you  somehow  or  other, 
Aunt  Myra." 

"Well,  I  hope  /  count  for  something"  interposed 
Evelyn, haughtily ;  "I expect  to  do  something  with  my 
brush.  I  think  I've  shown  there's  something  in  me 
already,  for  that  matter,  getting  a  picture  in  the 
Women's  Art  League  Exhibit  with  that  awfully  critical 
jury  that  refused  some  of  the  most  famous  artists  in 
Ohio- 

"And  Ohio's  the  banner  State  for  artists,  too  !"  said 
Van  Cleve,  wagging  his  head  solemnly. 

"Well,  but  it's  so,  Van  Cleve,  you  needn't  belittle  it 
that  way.  You  don't  know  how  much  it  means. 
Everybody  keeps  saying  to  me,  'Why,  your  reputa 
tion's  made  now,  Miss  Lucas ;  you've  reached  the  top  /' 
They  don't  have  to  say  it,  you  know,  so  I  know  they 
mean  it.  And  I've  told  you  how  jealous  some  of  the 
failures  are  —  girls  that  used  to  be  in  the  same  classes 
with  me  here,  and  ever  so  many  of  the  women  that  are 
considered  pretty  high  up  —  that  couldn't  get  their 
pictures  in,  you  know;  why,  the  very  fact  that  they 
are  so  jealous  of  me  just  shows  there's  something  in  my 
work,  doesn't  it,  Mama?  They  say  the  meanest, 
cat-iest  things,  like  hinting  that  Mr.  Keene  —  he's  on 
the  jury,  you  know,  the  most  important  one  of  them 
all  —  is  crazy  about  me,  and  would  let  any  old  daub 
in,  if  he  thought  I  did  it.  Of  course,  I  wouldn't  admit 
to  anybody  that  he  is"  said  Evelyn,  with  becoming 
reticence;  "but  I  do  him  the  justice  to  know  that  his 
feeling  about  me  doesn't  make  the  slightest  difference  ; 
he's  too  great  an  artist  and  too  fine  and  noble  to  let 


122  VAN    CLEVE: 

anything  personal  influence  him.  But  he  told  me  him 
self  that  I  need  have  no  fears  for  the  future  - 

"All  right,  Rosa  Bonheur,  you  get  busy  'with  your 
brush'  and  stave  off  the  poorhouse  when  the  time 
comes,  will  you  ?  In  the  meanwhile,  I  may  as  well 
keep  on  working,"  said  Van  Cleve,  cutting  her  short 
with  the  good-humored  indifference  his  cousin  found  so 
exasperating.  Many  a  genius  has  suffered  thus  from 
a  lack  of  appreciation  in  the  family ;  and  I  fear  Evelyn 
was  no  fonder  of  Van  Cleve  because  he  had  contributed 
to  her  artistic  education  with  unhesitating  liberality, 
perhaps  at  the  cost  of  some  scrimping  and  self-denial ; 
nor  did  she  like  him  any  the  better  for  having  forgotten 
all  about  these  sacrifices,  or  for  holding  them  of  no 
moment.  Yet  she  was  not  ungrateful ;  all  that  she 
wanted  was  for  him  to  take  her  seriously  —  and  he 
refused  to  take  her  seriously  !  It  was  obvious  that  he 
left  her  and  her  talents  and  her  achievements  out  of 
his  reckoning  altogether;  the  girl  could  have  forgiven 
an  offensive  scepticism  more  easily. 

"  All  you  think  about  is  money,  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  ! " 
she  burst  out  angrily ;  "  that's  the  only  standard  you've 
got.  If  I  sold  a  picture  for  seventy-five  or  a  hundred 
dollars,  you'd  believe  I  could  paint  —  you'd  think  I 
was  worth  while!" 

"  You  bet  I  would  !"  Van  Cleve  agreed  heartily,  if 
somewhat  absently ;  he  had  got  out  his  fountain-pen, 
and,  sitting  at  the  little  old-fashioned  black  walnut 
desk  in  the  corner  of  the  dining-room,  was  running 
over  the  monthly  bills  which  Mrs.  Lucas  always  col 
lected  together  and  bestowed  in  a  certain  old  Japanese 
lacquer  box  to  await  pay  day.  "  Oughtn't  there  to  be 
a  bill  here  from  Doctor  McCrea?"  said  Van,  looking 
up ;  "he  generally  sends  it  at  the  half  year." 

No  one  answered  immediately ;  and  to  his  surprise 
Van  Cleve  detected  a  conscious  glance  pass  among  the 
three  women.  His  grandmother  spoke  at  last.  "Eve- 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  123 

lyn  has  arranged  about  that  bill,"  she  said  proudly 
and  at  the  same  time  rather  timidly;  "it  was  forty- 
five  dollars,  and  Evelyn  went  to  see  the  doctor  and 
arranged  to  pay  it  herself." 

Van  Gleve  turned  his  light  gray  eyes  on  the  girl. 
"How?"  he  asked.  " How  are  you  going  to  pay  it ?" 
He  looked  interested.  "Did  you  save  it  up  yourself, 
Evie?  By  George,  that's  pretty  good  !" 

"Never  mind,  Van  dearest,  we  didn't  want  to  bother 
you  with  it ;  we  weren't  going  to  say  a  word  to  you  about 
it,"  his  aunt  cried  out,  in  a  hectic  excitement.  "You're 
always  so  splendid  and  honorable,  we  knew  you'd  pay 
the  doctor  and  go  without  a  new  spring  suit  —  and  you 
ought  to  have  a  spring  suit,  you  said  so  yourself  the 
other  day.  And  we  couldn't  bear  to  have  you  dis 
appointed  ;  it's  a  perfect  shame  the  way  you  deny 
yourself  all  the  time,  and  you  have  all  of  us  hanging 
around  your  neck  like  millstones."  Her  eyes  filled 
up;  she  almost  sobbed  the  next  words.  "So  Evelyn 
thought  out  a  p-plan,  and  she  went  to  see  the  doctor, 
and  —  you  tell  him,  Evie  —  oh,  Van,  she  is  the  noblest 
girl!" 

"I  simply  suggested  that  I  could  pay  him  with  a  pic 
ture,  Van,"  said  Evelyn,  not  without  complacency. 
"I  told  him  that  I  had  three  that  had  been  exhibited 
and  very  highly  spoken  of,  and  he  could  have  his 
choice.  You  know  any  one  of  them  is  worth  ever  so 
much  more  than  his  bill,  Van,"  said  Evelyn,  earnestly ; 
"but  of  course  I  didn't  tell  him  that  right  out  in  so 
many  words.  Only  I  thought  it  wasn't  any  harm  to 
let  him  know  that  they  were  very  valuable,  and  that 
he  wasn't  getting  cheated.  He  said  he  didn't  know 
much  about  pictures.  So  I  just  told  him  in  a  general 
sort  of  way,  you  know,  what  I  would  ask  for  these, 
and  I  could  see  he  was  perfectly  astonished  and  very 
much  impressed.  I'm  going  to  send  the  pictures  over 
to-morrow  for  him  to  pick  out.  It's  that  'View  of 


124  VAN   CLEVE: 

Paradise  Park  by  Moonlight/  and  'Over  the  Rhine/ 
and  that  lovely  'Bend  in  the  River ;  Fort  Thomas  — ' " 

"Have  you  got  his  bill?"  interrupted  the  other; 
and,  the  document  being  produced,  Van  Cleve  silently 
folded  it  away  in  his  letter  case  alongside  the  rest 
with  an  expression  that  somehow  disconcerted  the  little 
assembly. 

"I  think  you'd  better  give  up  this  —  this  arrange 
ment,  Evelyn/'  he  said  unemotionally.  "I'll  send  the 
doctor  a  check  to-day.  I'd  rather  you  didn't  pay 
any  bills  that  way." 

"Why,  Van,  why  not?"  Evelyn  protested;  "oh,  of 
course,  I  see!  You  think  my  paintings  aren't  worth 
forty-five  dollars.  You  think  they  aren't  worth  any 
thing.  You  don't  realize  that  my  pictures  are  just 
the  same  as  money." 

"Maybe  so.  You  couldn't  pay  the  butcher  with 
'em,"  said  Van  Cleve  —  a  remark  that  momentarily 
silenced  argument.  He  rose,  the  three  women  staring 
at  him  hurt,  angry,  bewildered.  "Now  look  here, 
Evelyn,"  he  said,  not  unkindly;  "you're  not  to  do 
anything  like  this  again,  you  understand  me?  I'm 
not  saying  anything  against  your  pictures ;  they  may 
be  worth  all  you  claim.  But  they  aren't  the  same  as 
money,  not  by  a  long  sight.  I  look  after  a  little  piece 
of  property  for  a  man  that's  a  marble-cutter  over  here 
on  Gilbert  Avenue ;  what  would  you  think  if  he  offered 
to  pay  me  with  a  statue  of  Psyche,  hey  ?  Now  I  know 
you  want  to  help  me,  but  that's  not  the  way  to  do  it 
-  to  go  and  bunko  somebody  into  taking  one  of  your 
pictures  in  return  for  his  work  that  he's  trying  to 
make  his  living  by.  Sell  your  picture  first,  and  do 
what  you  want  with  the  money  — 

"Stop,  Van  Cleve  !  Don't  you  see  you're  breaking 
her  heart !"  Mrs.  Lucas  screamed,  starting  to  her  feet 
and  rushing  to  throw  her  arms  around  her  daughter; 
both  of  them  were  sobbing  vehemently.  "How  can 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  125 

you  talk  so  ?  How  can  you  be  so  brutal  ?"  She  faced 
him  in  tragic  indignation.  "If  it  had  been  any  other 
man,  anybody  but  you,  Van  Cleve,  I'd  say  he  ought  to 
be  horse-whipped  —  /  " 

"  Don't,  Mother  darling,  don't !  Now  she'll  have  one 
of  her  heart  attacks  —  Van,  how  could  you  —  !"  pro 
claimed  Evelyn  in  her  turn ;  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  ran  for 
the  smelling  salts ;  the  maid  whirled  in  from  the 
kitchen ;  there  was  a  terrifying  to-do ;  in  the  midst  of 
it,  the  young  man,  who  was  not  unfamiliar  with  this 
sort  of  scene,  made  his  escape.  He  was  so  little  moved 
by  the  distress  he  left  behind  that  he  even  grinned  to 
himself  as  he  took  his  way  down  town,  thinking,  "I'd 
like  to  have  seen  McCrea's  face  when  Evie  handed 
him  that  gold  brick!"  Apart  from  performances  of 
this  nature,  which  were  likely  to  be  annoying,  Mr.  Van 
Cleve  attached  scarcely  any  importance  to  what 
women  said  and  did ;  all  women,  he  supposed,  were 
hysterical  fools  —  ahem  !  —  well,  not  that  exactly,  but 
ill  balanced  and  excitable  and  reasonless  —  all  but  one, 
that  :  Van  had  seen  enough  of  Lorrie  Gilbert  to 
know  mat  she,  at  least,  could  control  herself  and  act 
to  good  purpose  when  need  arose. 

He  thought  about  Lorrie  a  good  deal  these  days, 
tried  to  put  her  out  of  his  mind,  and  found  it  returning 
to  her  again  and  again  with  a  commingled  pain  and 
pleasure  which  he  now  at  last  understood.  As  usual  he 
was  ruthlessly  clear-eyed  and  clear-headed  about  it, 
ruthlessly  plain  spoken  with  himself.  He  knew  that 
he  was  nothing  to  Lorrie ;  she  had  never  encouraged 
him ;  if  Van  Cleve  had  ever  assumed  a  definitely  lover- 
like  attitude,  she  would  have  denied  him  with  real 
distress  and  regretted  keenly  the  lost  friend ;  and,  be 
sides,  she  was  credibly  reported  engaged  to  another 
man.  Van  worked  harder  than  this  other  man,  and 
he  made  as  much  money ;  if  not  so  ornamental  to  the 
community,  he  was  a  deal  more  useful ;  he  was  the 


126  VAN  CLEVE: 

Good  Apprentice  and  the  worthy  steward ;  but  he 
could  not  marry.  Even  had  Lorrie  been  as  much  in 
love  with  him  as  he  with  her,  he  could  not  have  asked 
her  to  marry  him.  His  sense  of  duty  and  his  hard 
pride  would  have  restrained  him.  "I'm  not  going  to 
ask  any  girl  to  live  with  my  family  —  I'm  not  going  to 
put  that  on  her,  and  I'm  not  going  to  ask  her  to  'wait 
for  me/  either/'  was  his  idea;  "I  don't  want  anybody 
taking  a  chance  on  me.  What  would  that  be,  anyhow, 
but  hinting  to  her  to  hang  on  till  some  of  my  people 
died  off  and  left  me  a  little  freer  ?  Not  for  me  !  When 
I'm  making  ten  thousand  a  year  will  be  time  enough 
for  marrying.  Lorrie'll  be  a  grandmother  by  that 
time,  most  likely  !  Oh,  well !"  he  sometimes  finished 
with  a  touch  of  his  harsh  fun.  Mr.  Kendrick  did  not 
lack  a  gift  of  philosophy;  and  it  was  equally  charac 
teristic  that  he  never  for  an  instant  doubted  he  would 
some  day  make  that  ten  thousand  a  year  and  much 
more. 

In  the  meanwhile,  life  was  not  uninteresting  even  to 
a  hopeless  lover  —  a  lover,  that  is,  with  as  hard  a  head, 
and  as  staunch  a  digestion  as  this  hero's.  This  very 
day,  when  Van  caught  the  next  down-going  car,  he 
found  its  crowded  passengers  reading  the  latest  news 
from  the  insurrection  in  that  neighboring  West  Indian 
island  of  which  we  were  beginning  to  hear  so  much 
in  those  days,  and  conclamantly  airing  their  views  on 
the  subject.  "DOOM  OF  HAVANA  SEALED  !  GENERAL 
GOMEZ  CAPTURES  THE  WATERWORKS  !"  one  man  read 
out  of  the  paper;  "that  settles  it,  boys!"  he  an 
nounced  with  much  solemnity;  "the  Spanish'll  have 
to  give  up  now.  They  can't  get  any  washing  done  !" 
And  everybody  laughed,  and  another  remarked  that 
he  had  never  understood  the  Spanish  were  very  strong 
on  laundry  work,  anyhow.  Van  Cleve,  clinging  to  his 
strap,  listened  inattentively ;  this  kind  of  talk  was  rife 
that  winter  —  had  been  going  the  rounds,  indeed,  for 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  127 

the  past  year.  Do  we  not  all  remember  it?  The 
United  States  ought  to  interfere  —  No,  sir,  what  busi 
ness  was  it  of  ours?  Let  'em  take  care  of  their  own 
troubles;  we  had  enough  to  keep  us  busy  with  ours 
already  ,  —  Well,  the  first  thing  you  know,  some  other 
nation  would  come  along,  Great  Britain,  for  instance, 
and  settle  the  whole  business  by  taking  Cuba  away 
from  Spain  once  for  all.  How  would  we  like  that  ? 
If  the  island  belonged  to  anybody,  it  ought,  logically, 
to  be  us.  —  Well,  I'm  against  imperialism  on  principle. 
This  talk  about  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  all  bosh. 
We've  never  had  occasion  to  butt  into  anybody  else's 
quarrel.  Look  how  Cleveland  put  his  foot  in  it  with 
that  Venezuela  fuss --Yes,  but  this  was  different; 
think  of  those  wretched  Cubans,  the  awful  oppression, 
the  fiendish  inhumanity.  —  Pshaw,  you  don't  know 
how  much  of  that  is  just  newspaper  stories.  —  Still,  you 
will  allow  they've  some  cause  for  complaint,  you'll 
allow  that  ?  Then  if  somebody  knocked  down  a  woman 
and  began  beating  her  to  death  on  your  front  porch, 
wouldn't  you  run  out  and  stop  it? --Huh,  and  if 
somebody  came  into  your  office  with  a  billy  and  ordered 
you  to  stop  bossing  your  office  boy,  what  would  you 
do?  Better  quit  making  bonfires  of  niggers  all  over 
the  country  before  we  went  around  blowing  off  a  lot  of 
hot  air  about  inhumanity,  I  guess,  etc.,  etc.  Maceo  — 
Weyler  —  McKinley  —  concentration  camps  —  filibus 
ters —  the  " Commodore"  expedition  —  do  we  not  all 
of  us  remember  it,  I  say  ? 

Mr.  Kendrick  was  among  those  who  were  against 
intervention  —  when  he  thought  about  Cuba's  troubles 
at  all,  which  was  seldom.  Of  late  he  had  been  giving 
a  stricter  attention  than  ever,  if  that  were  possible,  to 
the  National  Loan's  affairs.  He  thought  they  were  in 
danger  of  " going  to  sleep"  at  that  institution,  to  use 
his  own  words,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  to  out 
siders,  at  least,  it  seemed  to  be  prospering  greatly. 


128  VAN   CLEVE: 

The  simple  old  building  itself  had  recently  been  re 
modelled  at  a  handsome  cost,  with  all  the  new  devices 
for  heating  and  lighting  and  convenience  within,  and  a 
grand,  flourishing  portico  of  columns  without ;  you 
might  see  the  plain  citizens  who  were  its  patrons  sur 
veying  with  awe  the  new  marble  stairs,  and  the  figures 
of  " Commerce"  and  " Industry"  in  the  triangular 
brow  above  the  doors,  and  the  bronze  tablet  set  into 
the  corner-stone  with  the  mystifying  legend  A.D. 
MDCCCXCVI.  Van  Cleve  did  not  wholly  approve  of 
the  changes,  being  by  nature  severely  opposed  to  any 
sort  of  show ;  but  he  could  not  deny  that  the  bank 
took  in  a  number  of  fresh  accounts  about  that  time 
which  may  have  been  due  in  large  part  to  the  increased 
majesty  and  solidity  of  its  appearance.  Still  Van  was 
critical ;  he  had  not  been  with  the  Loan  and  Savings 
all  these  years  for  nothing,  and  he  had  gone  a  long  way 
since  his  early  days  in  the  office  when  he  had  felt  an 
unquestioning  respect  for  his  elders  and  a  readiness  to 
learn  of  them.  "This  bank  is  Julius  Gebhardt,"  he 
used  to  say  to  himself  shrewdly;  "he  is  the  National 
Loan  and  Savings,  body  and  bones,  hide,  horns,  and 
tallow.  Every  one  of  the  directors  is  a  back  number. 
They  keep  on  electing  themselves  over  and  over  again, 
and  when  they  come  trailing  in  here  Monday  mornings 
it  looks  like  an  overflow  meeting  from  the  Old  Men's 
Home.  I'll  bet  they  do  just  what  Gebhardt  says,  and 
half  the  time  they  don't  know  what  he's  saying.  Of 
course  he's  used  to  it,  but  it's  a  pretty  big  responsibility 
for  one  man.  He  knows  the  banking  business  as  well 
as  the  next  man,  I  suppose,  but  nobody's  infallible. 
The  trouble  with  him  is  he's  one  of  these  fellows  that 
don't  know  how  to  get  work  out  of  other  people  - 
and  more  in  the  same  strain,  proving  to  Van's  own  satis 
faction,  at  any  rate,  that  there  was  one  man  who  also 
knew  the  banking  business,  whose  judgment,  if  not 
infallible,  was  very  nearly  so,  who  did  know  how  to 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  129 

get  work  out  of  other  men,  to  wit :  Van  Cleve  Ken- 
drick.  If  he  had  owned  a  few  more  shares,  say  twenty 
instead  of  eight,  Van  was  confident  he  would  be  on  the 
board,  and  what  was  more,  would  probably  be  cashier 
in  place  of  Schlactman,  who  was  in  ill-health,  and 
talked  of  moving  to  Colorado.  In  fact,  Mr.  Gebhardt 
had  hinted  as  much,  in  his  big,  warm-hearted,  almost 
fatherly  way.  He  liked  Van  Cleve  and  did  not  hesi 
tate  to  show  it.  The  cashier's  salary  was  three  thou 
sand.  "I'd  have  a  use  for  it,"  Van  thought,  with  a 
grim  smile. 

The  family  had  lately  been  showing  signs  of  their 
perennially  recurrent  restlessness,  which  Van  recog 
nized  from  ancient  acquaintance.  To  be  sure,  a  change 
of  houses  was  about  due,  as  they  had  lived  in  the 
present  one  upwards  of  a  year.  Once  in  a  long  while 
it  crossed  Van  Cleve's  mind  that  he  might  some  day 
surprise  them  by  putting  his  foot  down  on  all  this 
foolishness ;  but  the  time  never  came.  He  always  had 
too  much  to  do  and  too  many  things  on  his  mind  to 
burden  himself  further  by  futile  attempts  at  argument 
with  his  household ;  he  knew  beforehand  every  word 
they  would  say,  and  lacked  the  patience  to  listen ;  it 
was  easier  and  infinitely  more  peaceful  to  let  them  have 
their  own  way.  As  for  discussing  his  plans  and  pros 
pects  with  them,  of  confiding  to  them  all  that  about 
the  bank  and  the  president  and  his  methods,  and  Van's 
own  opinions,  the  young  man  never  dreamed  of  such  a 
thing.  They  could  not  have  understood  a  word  of  it ; 
they  were  devoted  to  him  heart  and  soul,  but  they 
could  not  speak  his  language,  nor  live  in  his  world. 
The  Office  and  the  Street  were  his  real  home,  and 
under  his  own  roof  he  had  companions,  but  no  com 
panionship. 

He  had  forgot  all  about  the  morning's  disturbance, 
by  dinner-time  when  he  reached  home ;  and  was  only 
reminded  of  it  by  finding  the  house  as  yet  unlighted  in 


130  VAN   CLEVE: 

a  kind  of  symbolic  gloom,  and  everybody  tiptoeing 
about  in  an  impressive  anxiety.  "  Mother  has  been 
very  ill,  Van  Cleve,"  Evelyn  told  him  with  a  species  of 
reproachful  resignation;  "it  has  been  an  unusually 
sharp  seizure.  Doctor  McCrea  couldn't  understand 
this  attack  at  all,  and  kept  saying  she  must  have  had 
some  nervous  shock.  But  of  course  we  didn't  tell  him 
about  this  morning,"  said  Evelyn,  magnanimously. 
"It  doesn't  make  any  difference  about  me,  Van,  but 
I  hope  you  won't  be  so  cruel  again  to  poor  Mother, 
who  only  wanted  to  help  you  and  give  you  a  pleasure." 

"Well,  that's  so;  I'm  sorry  about  that,"  said  Van, 
troubled;  "I  forgot  how  easy  Aunt  Myra  gets  sick. 
But  you  know,  Evelyn,  I  can't  have  you  doing  things 
like  that,  if  only  for  the  looks  of  the  thing.  These 
doctors  all  keep  a  pretty  good  line  on  who  can  pay 
them  and  who  can't ;  they've  got  to.  Doctor  McCrea 
knew  I  could  afford  that  bill ;  it  wasn't  exorbitant  - 

"Doctor  McCrea  was  very  much  disappointed!" 
his  cousin  interrupted  triumphantly.  "I  explained 
to  him  in  a  tactful  way,  so  as  not  to  put  you  in  a  bad 
light,  and  he  said,  'Oh,  don't  I  get  any  picture  then?' 
and  I  could  see  he  didn't  like  it  at  all,  though  he  gave 
a  kind  of  queer  laugh.  /  couldn't  say  anything,  of 
course." 

Van  Cleve  grunted,  but  was  otherwise  silent,  after 
the  exasperating  fashion  he  had  of  allowing  Evelyn 
the  last  word,  and  the  peculiar  barrenness  of  victory. 
"And  there's  something  else,  Van  —  something  you 
ought  to  know.  The  doctor  says  that  Mother  - 
she  was  beginning  importantly ;  but  was  checked  by 
a  look  from  her  grandmother. 

"Dinner's  ready,  and  we'd  better  wait  till  afterward 
to  tell  Van  Cleve  about  that,"  interposed  the  old  lady, 
hastily,  remembering  other  days  and  the  late  Joshua. 
It  was  always  advisable  to  feed  a  man  first.  And 
accordingly  after  the  meal,  during  which  everybody 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  131 

was  painstakingly  amiable  and  lively,  she  herself  re- 
introduced  the  subject. 

"The  doctor  thinks  that  your  Aunt  Myra  ought  to 
be  in  a  different  climate,  Van  Cleve.  I  have  been 
thinking  it  myself  for  some  time,  and  when  I  spoke  of 
it  this  morning,  he  said  at  once  that  I  was  right,  and 
that  a  change  was  good  for  everybody.  He  said  if 
she  could  go  away  for  a  while,  it  would  undoubtedly 
make  her  feel  better  - 

"Then  I  explained  with  perfect  frankness,  because 
that  is  ahvays  best,"  Evelyn  interrupted,  "that  we 
couldn't  take  trips  South  and  all  that  sort  of  thing, 
which  I  could  see  he  was  about  to  suggest.  'Oh, 
Doctor  McCrea'  I  said,  'We  can't  be  running  off  on 
jaunts  that  way  just  for  pleasure.  We  have  to  make 
a  permanent  move.  And,  besides,  we've  been  here  for 
seven  years  now,  and  I  think  Mother  ought  to  get  out 
of  it  for  good.  The  Ohio  Valley  climate  never  has 
agreed  with  her,  and  now  she  is  fairly  saturated  with  it, 
and  you  can  see  she's  losing  ground  every  day.'  He 
said,  'Oh,  I  think  you  exaggerate,'  but  of  course  you 
know  he  said  that  just  to  soothe  me  and  keep  me  from 
being  frightened  - 

"You  mean  to  say  you  want  to  get  up  and  leave  here 
-  you  want  me  to  quit  my  job,  and  look  for  another 
somewhere  else,"  said  Van  Cleve,  unmoved  as  usual. 

"But  if  it's  a  question  of  Mother's  health,  Van  Cleve 

)) 

"You  can  always  get  something  to  do  —  you're  not 
appreciated  in  the  bank,  anyhow.  You  could  get  Mr. 
Gebhardt  to  transfer  you  to  some  other  bank ;  they  do 
things  like  that  all  the  time,  don't  they  ?  Mr.  Gebhardt 
thinks  so  highly  of  you,  he'd  do  anything  for  you,  Van 
-you  could  go  anywhere  on  his  recommendation,'7 
cried  Mrs.  Van  Cleve. 

"Where  d'ye  want  to  go  now?"  said  Van  Cleve, 
coming  to  the  point  with  his  disconcerting  directness. 


132  VAN   CLEVE: 

Evelyn  began  eagerly:  "Why,  I  thought  at  once  of 
New  York.  I  could  look  after  Mother,  and  still  go  on 
with  my  professional  career.  It  would  be  an  ideal 
arrangement  - 

"I  never  heard  New  York  talked  up  much  for  a 
health  resort,"  said  Van  Cleve. 

"Well,  a  health  resort  isn't  what  she  needs,  you  know. 
It's  the  complete  change  that  would  be  so  beneficial. 
Doctor  McCrea  was  enthusiastic;  he  said  it  couldn't 
possibly  do  her  any  harm,  and  would  probably  be  just 
as  good  for  her  as  anywhere.  And  you  know  New 
York  is  so  interesting,  Van.  I  loved  it  when  I  was  study 
ing  there.  I  have  such  clever,  stimulating,  exceptional 
friends.  The  change  in  the  social  atmosphere  alone 
would  brace  Mother  right  up,  I  know  - 

"New  York  is  a  wonderful  city,"  said  Major  Van 
Cleve;  "I  remember  General  Grant  making  that  very 
remark  to  me  once  when  we  were  walking  up  Fifth 
Avenue ;  we  were  both  of  us  just  back  from  the  War,  but 
it  was  before  he  had  been  elected  to  the  Presidency. 
He  turned  to  me  and  said :  'Well,  Mage  -  '  that  was 
his  nickname  for  me  —  '  New  York  is  a  marvellous 
place,  isn't  it  ?  '  Rather  odd  that  he  should  have  died 
and  been  buried  there  afterwards,  I  always  thought." 

Van  Cleve  let  them  talk ;  he  was  not  angry  nor  out 
of  patience ;  he  was  only  sourly  amused.  This  was 
Van's  day  —  a  fair  sample  of  all  his  days.  People  who 
happened  to  be  pretty  well  acquainted  with  the  family 
used  to  repeat  around  a  saying  of  Bob  Gilbert's  that 
always  brought  a  laugh  from  the  men,  whatever  the 
women  thought  of  it.  I  suppose  it  was  really  dread 
fully  coarse.  "'S  shame!"  says  Bob,  who  was  about 
three  parts  drunk,  with  tearful  vehemence;  "'s  shame 
zose  Van  Cleves.  Kept  Van's  nose  grindstone  years  — 
always  will  keep  it  -  -  's  shame.  Know  what  they  all 
need  ?  Spankin'  -  -  hie  —  ol'  lady  an'  all  of  'em  - 
need  spankin'  -  "  reiterated  Bob  with  dark  and  frown 
ing  emphasis.  "Goo'  spankin'  !" 


CHAPTER  IX 

IN    WHICH    WE    GIVE    A    DOG   A   BAD    NAME 

I  DO  not  remember  whether  it  is  recorded  that  the 
Industrious  Apprentice  ever  took  the  Idle  Apprentice 
aside,  and  pointed  out  to  him  the  folly  of  his  ways, 
scolded  him  heartily,  and  pled  with  him  to  reform. 
A  man  must  have  a  tolerably  good  conceit  of  himself 
who  will  undertake  to  direct  another  man  how  to  live, 
even  though  this  other  may  be  as  notoriously  in  need 
of  direction  as  was  Robert  Gilbert.  Van  Cleve  hesi 
tated  and  shrank  before  the  task.  He  told  himself 
that  he  had  too  stiff  a  job  doing  his  own  duty  to  be 
qualified  to  preach  theirs  to  other  people.  Was  he  his 
brother's  keeper,  anyhow  ?  It  was  impatience  and  in 
dignation  that  roused  him  to  hunt  Bob  out  and  lecture 
him,  at  last.  Van  thought  the  world  was  too  kind, 
too  stupidly  kind,  to  this  culprit ;  it  liked  him  too  well ; 
it  was  ruinously  soft-hearted;  it  kept  on  giving  him 
a  chance  when  it  should  have  brought  him  up  with 
a  round  turn  !  And  all  this  in  the  face  of  the  strange 
fact  that  Robert  himself  asked  no  quarter;  he  never 
offered  any  excuses;  he  was  the  most  amiably  un 
ashamed  and  unrepentant  sinner  on  earth,  and  the  most 
incurably  sanguine.  "Never  mind,  Van,  old  man, 
don't  worry  yourself  so  over  me.  I  hate  to  see  you 
so  worried!"  he  said  affectionately,  when  the  sober 
Mr.  Kendrick  had  painfully  got  through  with  his 
exhortations.  "I'm  going  to  come  out  all  right,  you 
see  if  I  don't.  I'll  get  out  even,  don't  you  worry." 

133 


134  VAN   CLEVE: 

"You're  always  saying  that,  Bob,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
glumly;  "you  know  very  well  you  can't  keep  up  this 
gait  and  come  out  anywhere  but  behind.  You're 
ruining  your  health,  and  spoiling  your  chances,  and 
making  your  people  unhappy.  You've  got  plenty  of 
sense,  Bob,  and  I  can't  see  why  - 

"Well,  I'm  glad  you'll  allow  me  that  much,  anyhow  ! " 
said  Bob  with  the  utmost  good  temper.  He  met  his 
friend's  severe  gaze  with  one  full  of  amusement,  in 
superable  nonchalance,  honest  affection.  "You're  not 
much  of  a  preacher,  Van ;  your  heart's  not  in  it.  You 
don't  really  want  to  reform  the  bad  little  boy  and  make 
him  a  good  little  boy,  and  have  him  sign  the  pledge 
and  all  that,  in  the  interest  of  virtue  and  respectability 
—  not  a  bit  of  it,  you  time-serving  old  utilitarian,  you  ! 
You  only  - 

"Oh,  good,  bad — that's  not  what  I'm  talking  about !" 
interrupted  Van  Cleve,  with  a  movement  of  irritation ; 
"I  don't  want  you  to  make  an  everlasting  fool  of  your 
self,  that's  all !  All  this  drinking  and  having  a  good 
time  with  the  boys,  what  does  it  amount  to  ?  Can't 
you  see  there's  nothing  in  it  ?  You  can't  keep  on  with 
that  all  your  life.  Why,  why  —  damn  it,  Bob,  there's 
nothing  in  it!  Can't  you  see  that?" 

"There  !  Didn't  I  say  that  was  the  way  you  felt !" 
Bob  stated,  grinning.  He  made  an  extravagant  dis 
play  of  surprise.  "Why,  Van  Cleve,  it  looks  to  me  as 
if  you  were  trying  to  get  me  to  settle  down  and  work 
like  yourself  !  And  I  used  to  think  you  had  a  sense  of 
humor  !  Now  Phil  Cortwright  says  - 

"Oh,  cut  it  out !"  said  Van,  scowling. 

"All  right,  just  as  you  say,"  the  other  retorted 
tolerantly. 

"I'm  only  talking  because  I  —  because  I  —  I  think 
a  lot  of  you,  you  know,  Bob,"  said  Van  Cleve,  looking 
down,  chewing  hard  at  the  end  of  his  cigar,  mortally 
abashed  by  this  sentimental  admission.  The  sight 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  135 

moved  Bob  as  no  amount  of  arguing  or  hectoring  could 
have  done. 

"Why,  of  course  I  know  that,  Van  !"  he  cried  out. 
The  moisture  sprang  into  his  eyes ;  he  wiped  them 
unaffectedly.  "  Why,  I  know  that,  my  dear  old  fellow  ! 
You're  all  right  —  everything  you  say  is  pretty  near 
right,  I  guess/7  he  said  incoherently.  He  pulled  him 
self  together  and  went  on  with  more  steadiness,  even 
earnestness  —  for  him.  "You  see,  Van  Cleve,  I've 
got  a  different  way  of  looking  at  it  from  you.  I  believe 
in  —  in  —  well,  I  believe  a  man's  life's  his  own  to  do 
what  he  wants  with,  so  long  as  he  doesn't  harm  any 
body  else.  Well,  then  /  don't  harm  anybody  else,  do 
I  ?  Suppose  I  do  —  well  —  lush  some  off  and  on,  and 
-  and  all  that,  you  know  —  all  the  other  things  you 
say  —  why,  it  doesn't  hurt  anybody  but  me,  does  it? 
If  I'm  willing  to  take  the  consequences,  why,  it  doesn't 
need  to  worry  you  any.  I  don't  ask  anybody  to  suffer 
for  it  but  myself.  Then  where's  the  harm?  I'm  not 
responsible  for  any  one  else,  and  nobody  else  needs  to 
feel  responsible  for  me.  That's  the  way  I  look 
at  it." 

"Do  the  family  look  at  it  that  way,  too  ?"  Van  Cleve 
asked. 

"The  family  ?  Oh,  well,  they  —  of  course  they  think 
more  or  less  as  you  do,  and  the  rest  of  the  representative 
citizens,"  said  Bob,  smiling,  but  for  the  first  time  a 
little  restive  under  his  friend's  eye.  "Hang  it,  you 
goody-good  people  don't  know  how  funny  and  incon 
sistent  you  are  !"  he  burst  out  in  a  sort  of  good-natured 
impatience.  "There're  plenty  of  respectable  old  skin 
flints  walking  around  town  this  minute  that  gouge  and 
grind  and  pile  up  the  dollars  and  do  more  mischief 
in  a  day  than  I  can  in  a  year,  and  because  they  pass  the 
plate  in  church,  and  go  home  to  bed  with  the  chickens, 
and  never  drink  anything  stronger  than  cold  tea,  you 
hold  'em  up  to  me  for  models  — 


136  VAN   CLEVE: 

"I  wasn't  holding  up  any  models.  You're  dodging, 
Bob,"  said  the  other,  gloomily. 

But  Bob  had  returned  to  his  thesis.  "Of  course 
I  don't  mean  to  keep  it  up  all  my  life,  as  you  were 
saying.  I  can  stop  whenever  I  want  to  —  when  I 
get  tired  of  it.  In  the  meanwhile  I'm  not  hurting 
anybody  but  myself,  and  I'm  not  hurting  myself 
anything  to  speak  of.  And  I'll  pay  that  score  myself," 
he  repeated,  rather  grandiloquently. 

"I  don't  know  whether  a  man  can  do  that  or  not," 
said  Van  Cleve;  "pay  for  himself,  I  mean.  Looks  to 
me  sometimes  as  if  everybody  got  assessed  for  him  all 
around." 

Robert  had  left  Messrs.  Steinberger  &  Hirsch 
some  while  before  this  date,  those  gentleman  having, 
in  fact,  intimated  that  his  services  were  no  longer  re 
quired.  Even  their  not  unduly  exalted  standards  were 
too  high  for  the  young  man,  it  seemed.  "We  liked 
him,  too,"  one  of  the  partners  was  reported  to  have 
expressed  himself ;  "  we  liked  him  first-rate  —  but  he's 
no  good.  We  gave  him  a  thorough  try  out,  but  he'll 
never  be  any  good  !"  and  Mr.  Hirsch  chalked  his  cue, 
and  tried  a  shot  and  missed,  and  perched  himself  once 
more  on  the  tall-legged  chair  in  the  billiard  room  of 
the  Business  Men's,  while  the  regular  after-luncheon 
game  proceeded.  "I'm  sorry  for  his  folks,"  he  ob 
served;  "Max  and  I  stood  for  it  a  good  deal  longer 
than  we  would  have  for  most,  on  their  account  —  nice 
folks  —  nice  old  gentleman,  the  Professor  —  but  that 
boy  -  '  he  gave  a  negative  twitch  of  the  head,  and 
abandoned  the  subject. 

The  next  news  was  that  young  Gilbert  had  got  a 
berth  on  the  Record-World,  which  was  a  penny  sheet 
that  used  to  come  out  in  six  or  eight  successive  editions 
of  an  afternoon  with  detonating  head-lines,  every 
smallest  event  decorated  with  the  most  lurid  purple 
patch  conceivable.  For  a  while  the  young  man  was 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  137 

quite  faithful  to  his  duties,  perhaps  finding  in  the  haste 
and  tension  of  the  work  almost  enough  of  the  false 
excitement  he  seemed  to  crave.  As  invariably  hap 
pened,  everybody  in  this  new  world  liked  him ;  they 
liked  him  even  after  they,  too,  had  begun  to  shake  their 
heads  over  him  —  even  when  they,  too,  had  to  "  speak 
to"  him.  In  the  end,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  friends  he 
was  constantly  making  and  constantly  disappointing, 
they  also  acknowledged  that  Bob  was  indeed  "no  good." 
He  had  some  fine,  warm-blooded  virtues ;  he  was  loyal, 
generous,  and  humane ;  he  was  curiously  clean-minded 
and  simple  with  all  his  gross  self-indulgence.  But  — 
they  agreed  sorrowfully  —  he  was  not  over  clever ; 
he  could  not  be  depended  on  for  half  an  hour ;  he  did 
not  know  the  meaning  of  duty  and  ambition ;  put  him 
to  the  test,  in  short,  and  you  would  find  Bob  Gilbert 
pretty  nearly  worthless. 

The  family  accepted  the  unhappy  fact  with  a  plain 
and  prosaic  dignity,  as  do  almost  all  families ;  we 
may  observe  them  often,  perfectly  unheroic  individu 
ally,  yet  displaying  collectively  not  a  little  heroism. 
No  doubt  they  all  got  used  to  it  in  the  course  of  time ; 
and  of  course  the  Professor  and  his  wife  had  realized  the 
truth  from  the  first,  even  when  Lorrie  was  doing  her  best 
to  shield  them  from  it.  Van  Cleve  told  her  so  in  his 
hard,  matter-of-fact  way.  "It's  no  use,  Lorrie,"  he 
said;  "you  can't  keep  this  thing  about  Bob  dark. 
Your  mother's  probably  known  all  along.  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  she  thought  she  was  keeping  it  from  you  all 
the  while  you  thought  you  were  keeping  it  from  her. 
I  don't  know  why  women  make  believe  that  way. 
It  doesn't  do  any  good.  Might  as  well  look  at  things 
square  in  the  face." 

"You  don't  understand  —  men  can't  understand," 
said  Lorrie,  sadly;  "why,  Mother  and  I  can't  talk 
about  it,  even  now,  to  each  other.  We  keep  on  pre 
tending.  Why,  you  yourself  have  never  talked  about 


138  VAN   CLEVE: 

it  like  this  before,  and  yet  you  knew,  you  must  have 
known  about  Bob  for  two  or  three  years,  even  if  you 
didn't  know  before  that.  Is  that  why  you  haven't  — 
you  haven't  been  with  him  so  much  ?" 

"Well,  Bob's  never  around  where  I  am,  you  know," 
said  Van  Cleve,  a  little  lamely ;  it  was  not  easy  to 
explain  his  position  to  Bob's  sister.  "I'm  busy  — 

I  haven't  any  time  to  hunt  him  up.     I'm  sorry,  but 

» 

"But  you'll  have  to  let  Bob  go  ?"  Lorrie  finished  for 
him,  unable  to  keep  the  bitterness  out  of  her  voice. 
"I'm  sorry,  too,  Van.  You're  one  of  the  people  that 
can  do  the  most  with  him  —  that  he  pays  the  most 
attention  to.  If  his  own  friends  give  him  up  —  but 
I  daresay  you  are  right.  You  can't  sacrifice  your 
own  interests  —  you  have  yourself  to  think  about 
and  your  own  future,  and  you  can't  be  burdened 
with  Bob." 

"Yes,  I've  got  to  think  about  myself  —  I'm  always 
thinking  about  myself,"  Van  Cleve  agreed  with  her 
dryly.  Her  words  stung  him  to  the  quick ;  he  was 
conscious  of  a  certain  truth  underlying  their  unkind- 
ness  and  unfairness.  He  was  constantly  thinking 
about  Van  Cleve  Kendrick's  affairs  and  prospects  - 
he  was  thinking  about  himself,  but  surely,  surely  not 
wholly  for  himself  !  That  very  morning  Evelyn  and 
his  aunt  had  begun  again  with  their  New  York  plan. 
They  had  written  to  a  dozen  friends  and  fellow-students, 
wonderfully  able,  astute  persons,  and  got  all  manner  of 
reports,  figures,  and  estimates  pointing  unanimously 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  incalculably  cheaper  and  healthier 
to  live  in  New  York  than  anywhere  else  on  the  face  of 
this  globe  !  Two  hundred  would  move  them  beauti 
fully —  "You  know  we're  very  good  managers,  Van, 
dearest."  "Two  hundred,  hey?  You  must  think  I 
get  my  money  from  the  pump  !"  he  had  said  in  vain 
jocularity.  Now  a  sudden  melancholy  invaded  the 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  139 

young  man ;  what  was  he  but  a  money-making  machine  ? 
he  thought  dispiritedly.  Even  Lorrie  believed  that 
that  was  all  he  cared  for  —  even  Lorrie  ! 

As  for  Lorrie  herself,  did  she  know  how  she  hurt 
him?  She  was  a  tender-hearted,  good  woman,  and 
shrank  from  inflicting  pain  on  anybody;  but  even  a 
tender-hearted,  good  woman  may  sometimes  take  ad 
vantage  of  her  position  to  visit  some  of  her  own  unhappi- 
ness  on  another's  head.  And  Lorrie  would  have  been 
more  than  a  mortal  girl  not  to  have  suspected  her  power 
over  the  young  fellow.  At  any  rate,  swift  contrition 
and  a  desire  to  make  amends  took  hold  of  her.  "That 
sounded  horrid,  but  I  didn't  mean  it  that  way,  you 
know/'  she  said  hastily  and  penitently;  "it's  only 
that  I  do  wish  —  you  have  such  an  influence  over  Bob 
-  if  he  was  only  out  of  that  —  that  atmosphere  he's 
got  into  —  if  he  was  with  people  like  you  - 

"Oh,  influence!"  Van  broke  in  harshly;  "I  tell  you, 
Lorrie,  this  talk  about  ' unfortunate  surroundings' 
and  'bad  influence'  and  'good  influence'  makes  me 
very  tired.  Any  fellow  that's  too  weak-kneed  to  resist 
'evil  influence'  is  too  weak-kneed  to  be  bolstered  up 
much  by  good  ones.  Not  you  nor  I  nor  the  Almighty 
can  make  a  man  go  crooked  any  more  than  we  can 
make  him  go  straight;  he's  got  to  do  it  himself.  'I 
got  into  bad  company-  '  'I  wasn't  directed  right - 
'  Nobody  looked  after  me  -  '  pooh  !  That's  the  old 
eternal  incessant  yawp  of  folly  and  feebleness  and 
guilt  —  you  don't  want  to  begin  excusing  Bob  that  way. 
Of  course  I  know  you  will  forgive  him  and  keep  on 
forgiving  him,  no  matter  what  he  does  — " 

"And  what  kind  of  a  sister  would  I  be,  if  I  didn't?" 
cried  Lorrie  with  a  great  deal  of  spirit.  "I  don't  at 
all  believe  what  you  say,  Van.  People  are  different. 
We  can't  all  be  pillars  of  strength.  Mr.  Cortwright 
says  -  "  she  stopped  short.  "Well  ?"  she  said  sharply ; 
for  Mr.  Kendrick's  countenance  had  assumed  an  ex- 


140  VAN   CLEVE: 

tremely  forbidding  and  unpleasant  expression  at  the 
sound  of  that  name. 

"Bob  started  quoting  Cortwright  at  me,  too,"  he 
said  acridly.  "  That's  where  he's  got  his  precious 
theories  about  irresponsibility,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 
I  recognized  the  brand." 

"Oh  !  Then  you  don't  think  Mr.  Cortwright  is  the 
proper  sort  of  friend  for  Bob  to  have,  is  that  it  ?"  said 
Lorrie,  in  an  ominous  calm. 

"Well,  I  don't,  Lorrie,  since  you  ask  me.  I  think 
that  association  has  been  the  worst  thing  in  the  world 
for  a  fellow  of  Bob's  disposition,"  said  Van  Cleve; 
and  he  was  honest  and  disinterested  in  saying  it.  "I 
believe  Cortwright's  influence  - 

"I  thought  you  said  just  now  that  influence  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it,"  said  Lorrie.  And  Van  Cleve 
had  no  answer,  alas  !  His  own  words  confounded  him. 
He  was  sure  he  was  right ;  right  in  his  theory,  right 
about  the  facts,  but  no  juggling  would  fit  the  two  to 
gether  ! 

The  interview  ended  rather  stiffly  on  both  sides; 
Lorrie  went  upstairs  after  the  young  man  had  left,  with 
a  fire-red  spot  on  each  cheek.  "The  idea  of  his  hinting 
that  about  Philip!"  she  thought  with  an  anger  no 
criticism  of  herself  could  have  aroused;  "Phil  never 
says  a  word  about  him.  And  he's  tried  and  tried,  and 
done  his  best  for  Bob.  What  did  Van  Cleve  Kendrick 
ever  do,  I'd  like  to  know  ?  He's  ashamed  of  the  way 
he's  abandoned  Bob,  that's  all  —  he's  ashamed  and 
-  and  jealous,  that's  what  made  him  talk  that  way !" 

And  that  was  all  Mr.  Kendrick  got  for  his  inter 
ference.  It  would  have  darkened  his  skies  enough  to 
know  that  he  had  offended  Lorrie  or  hurt  her ;  but  not 
long  after  a  piece  of  news  descended  upon  him  like 
another  blight  —  news  which,  by  the  way,  was  already 
common  property,  and  seemed  to  have  travelled  around 
to  everybody  before  reaching  him,  who  was  secretly 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  141 

the  most  concerned.  Even  Major  Van  Cleve  knew  it  ; 
even  Mr.  Gebhardt  referred  to  it  negligently,  having 
probably  been  informed  by  Natalie  or  the  other  Geb 
hardt  girls ;  and  it  had  a  paragraph  all  to  itself  in  next 
Sunday  morning's  Society  Jottings — "The  engage 
ment  is  announced  of  Miss  Laura  Gilbert,  daughter 
of  Professor  and  Mrs.  Gilbert,  who  has  been  a  great 
favorite  ever  since  she  made  her  bow  to  society  two 
or  three  seasons  ago,  to  Mr.  Philip  Cortwright.  Mr. 
Cortwright  is  a  Eureka  College  man,  a  member  of  the 
old  Cortwright  family  of  Kentucky  -  etc.,  etc. 
"Two  or  three  seasons  ago!"  ejaculated  Miss  Lucas  in 
high  contempt  and  indignation  upon  reading  the  above 
lines;  "Lorrie  Gilbert's  been  out  for  ten  years.  She 
was  going  everywhere  when  we  first  came  here  to  live. 
But  of  course  the  society  reporters  have  to  say  some 
thing  agreeable,  or  nobody  would  tell  them  anything." 

Van  Cleve  heard  the  announcement  silently,  with  as 
indifferent  a  face  as  he  could  manage.  "I  chose  a  good 
time  to  tell  her  I  didn't  approve  of  Cortwright  —  tact 
ful  and  opportune  in  me,  wasn't  it?"  he  remarked  in 
wardly,  with  savage  irony.  The  next  time  he  saw  her 
there  were  others  about,  and  a  good  deal  of  joking 
allusion  going  on,  and  it  would  undoubtedly  have  been 
the  proper  moment  for  Mr.  Kendrick  to  have  ten 
dered  his  compliments  upon  the  happy  event ;  but,  in 
point  of  fact,  he  did  nothing  of  the  kind  ;  he  kept  silence 
-  and  it  may  be  Miss  Gilbert  liked  him  just  as  well 
for  saying  nothing  and  looking  morose;  she  was  only 
human  after  all. 

In  truth,  Lorrie  was  human  enough  to  be  very  happy 
these  days,  in  spite  of  the  skeleton  in  the  family  closet. 
It  would  be  hard  for  a  girl  yet  in  her  twenties,  engaged 
to  be  married  to  a  very  handsome,  devoted,  popular 
(or,  at  least,  well-known)  young  fellow,  with  whom  she 
is  quite  openly  and  genuinely  in  love  —  it  would  be 
a  hard  matter,  I  say,  for  any  girl  to  be  seriously  un- 


142  VAN  CLEVE: 

happy  in  these  circumstances.  Of  course,  they  were 
not  to  be  married  for  a  while  yet  —  Philip's  business, 
etc.  But  Lorrie  was  profoundly  busy,  hemstitching, 
embroidering  monograms,  looking  out  for  bargains 
in  household  linens,  and  so  on ;  you  came  upon  her  at 
the  counters,  turning  over  piles  of  dainty  goods,  rosy, 
thoughtfully  excited,  measuring  off  on  her  neat  fingers, 
sagacious,  sweet,  wholesome,  about  this  as  about  every 
thing.  It  was  understood  that  perhaps  next  year  - 
her  mother's  wedding-day  had  been  the  tenth  of  June ; 
if  Lorrie  should  be  married  next  year,  the  tenth  of 
June,  eighteen-ninety-nine,  it  would  be  thirty  years  to 
the  day,  after  her  mother  —  remarkable  fact !  That 
would  be  the  last  year  of  the  century,  too  —  another 
remarkable  fact ! 

"No,  it  won't  be  the  last  year.  Nineteen  hun 
dred's  the  last  year,"  said  Cortwright,  laughing.  He 
recited  the  hundred-pennies-in-a-dollar  argument  which 
people  were  making  use  of  to  convince  one  another  on 
this  often  disputed  point.  "Why,  you  wise,  practical 
little  person,  who  would  have  thought  you  would  have 
had  to  have  that  explained  to  you  ?  "  he  said  fondly.  It 
pleased  him  singularly  to  catch  her  tripping ;  he  liked 
to  feel  even  so  trivial  a  superiority,  for  there  were 
many  moments,  when,  as  secure  as  he  was  in  his  own 
conceit,  he  was  a  little  afraid,  a  little  abashed  in  the 
presence  of  this  girl  whom  he  was  to  marry ;  sometimes 
he  wished  uncomfortably  that  Lorrie  were  not  quite 
so  good!  "Why  won't  you  let  me  kiss  you?"  he  once 
said  to  her  aggrievedly,  in  the  first  hours  of  their  be 
trothal.  "You  belong  to  me  now.  I  wouldn't  be 
a  man  if  I  didn't  want  to.  Most  girls  like  it  —  I  mean 
I  always  supposed  they  did  —  I  always  understood 
so.  How  can  you  be  so  —  so  cold  ?"  He  put  an  arm 
around  her,  at  once  masterful  and  beseeching.  "Please, 
Lorrie  I-i  You  know  you  really  like  —  want  me  to  - 
he  murmured  with  lips  very  close. 


HIS    FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  143 

"  You  can  kiss  me,  but  not  —  not  my  neck  that  way/7 
said  Lorrie,  backing  off,  turning  scarlet,  troubled  rather 
than  angry.  "I  —  I  don't  like  to  have  you  kiss  my 
neck  —  '  for  indeed  it  was  some  such  intimate  caress 
which  he  had  already  attempted  that  had  led  to  this 
scene.  The  young  woman  shrank  from  it  indefinably  ; 
she  shrank  from  the  act  and  the  look  in  her  lover's 
eyes.  Cortwright  obeyed,  resenting  what  he  called 
inwardly  her  prudery,  even  while  clearly  conscious 
that  it  was  precisely  that  quality  about  her  which  most 
strongly  attracted  him.  She  wasn't  cheap,  he  thought, 
with  an  exultant  thrill ;  and  naturally  coveted  her  the 
more. 

This  news  of  Lorrie  Gilbert's  engagement  created 
only  a  mild  stir  socially,  having  been  expected  any 
time  these  two  or  three  years.  It  was  supposed  to  be 
a  very  suitable  match ;  Lorrie  might  have  done  better, 
doubtless  —  she  had  never  lacked  attention  from  men, 
some  of  whom  had  been  better  off  in  the  worldly  way, 
and  perhaps  more  "settled."  than  Mr.  Cortwright. 
But  the  latter,  ever  since  he  came  here,  had  always  been 
well  enough  received  and  well  enough  liked  and  was 
doing  well  enough,  as  all  agreed,  in  his  business  ;  and  it 
looked  as  if  he  was  very  much  in  love  with  Lorrie,  and 
certainly  she  was  over  head  and  ears  in  love  with  him. 
People  in  general  were  glad  to  hear  anything  pleasant 
connected  with  the  poor  Gilberts,  who  had  had  so  much 
that  was  sad  and  discreditable  to  endure  from  that 
ne'er-do-well,  Robert.  It  had  gotten  to  the  pass  that 
their  friends  seldom  even  mentioned  Robert  nowadays. 
The  girls  whom  he  used  to  know,  who  came  to  see 
Lorrie  and  gave  her  engagement  luncheons  and  engage 
ment  presents  of  little  silver  candlesticks,  and  orna 
mental  spoons  and  after-dinner  coffee-cups,  who  were 
already  planning  linen  showers,  and  chattering  to  her 
about  the  lovely  four-room  suites  in  the  new  apartment 
buildings,  those  girls  never  asked  after  Bob.  They 


144  VAN   CLEVE: 

never  invited  him  to  their  homes  any  more ;  they 
contrived  not  to  see  him  on  the  street.  How  could 
they?  He  had  got  to  looking  so  seedy  and  run-down 
and  dissipated,  they  said.  Nobody  would  want  to 
be  seen  with  him  —  nobody  could  afford  to  be  seen 
with  him  !  The  last  appearance  he  made  in  society 
had  been  when  he  went  to  call  on  one  of  the  girls  so 
"  tanked/'  as  she  afterwards  described  his  condition  in 
indignant  slang,  that  he  didn't  know  what  he  was 
doing,  and  her  Uncle  George,  who  providentially 
happened  to  be  staying  there  for  the  Christmas  holi 
days,  had  to  get  him  away  out  of  the  house,  and  take 
him  back  to  the  Gilberts' ;  and  when  Papa  (who  had 
been  in  Chicago)  got  home  and  heard  about  it,  he  said 
never  to  let  that  young  man  speak  to  her  again  !  It 
was  a  universal  taboo,  excepting  on  the  part  of  Miss 
Paula  Jameson,  whom  Bob  continued  to  visit  in  his 
ostracism  more  often  than  ever  before.  At  the  moment, 
however,  he  was  deprived  even  of  that  resource,  for 
Paula  went  to  Palm  Beach  with  her  mother  in  March ; 
conceivably,  Robert  was  the  only  person  that  missed 
her.  The  young  lady  had  never  counted  at  all, 
socially ;  she  had  no  friends,  and  heard  from  and  wrote 
to  nobody,  not  even  Lorrie.  "  She's  got  such  awfully 
hotel  manners  !"  was  a  criticism  I  once  overheard  from 
some  other  young  lady;  "and  the  way  she  simply 
fastened  herself  on  to  Lorrie  Gilbert !  I  suppose  she 
found  she  couldn't  get  in  after  all,  because  she  doesn't 
stick  to  Lorrie  so  much  now,  but  it  used  to  be,  really 
-  !"  She  ended  these  somewhat  cryptic  sentences 
in  a  tone  conveying  all  the  scathing  disapproval  of 
sweet-and-twenty. 


CHAPTER  X 
REMEMBER  THE  MAINE! 

THAT  winter  —  about  ten  years  ago,  wasn't  it  ?  —  all 
the  world  of  our  town,  as  of  a  hundred  other  towns  all 
over  the  country,  went  about  its  business  and  pleasure 
as  usual  without  the  slightest  suspicion  that  a  tremen 
dous  national  event  was  going  to  take  place,  though  this 
will  doubtless  seem  to  our  descendants  to  have  been 
abundantly  foreshadowed.  Couldn't  we  see  it  coming  ? 
Is  it  possible  that  we  never  saw  it  coming?  We  did 
not,  oh,  younger  generation.  The  world,  Lome's 
world,  the  Van  Cleves'  world,  your  and  my  world,  was 
bringing  its  daughters  "out"  at  dances  and  dinners 
and  teas,  and  going  to  its  clubs  and  Symphony  concerts, 
and  to  the  Yale-Harvard  Game,  and  the  Horse-show, 
and  the  Junior  Prom.,  —  when  it  could  afford  these 
latter  diversions,  —  and  complaining  about  its  servants 
and  the  high  cost  of  living,  even  as  it  does  to-day. 
Every  morning  the  world  got  up  and  read  in  its  news 
paper  about  Zola  and  Dreyfus  with  a  kind  of  indignant 
amusement ;  it  read  about  the  last  murder,  the  last 
divorce,  the  last  serum  discovery  and  Edison  inven 
tion;  and  perhaps  wondered  indifferently  if  these 
mechanical  piano  players  and  motor  vehicles  they  were 
experimenting  with  would  ever  be  of  any  practical 
value  !  It  also  read  that  the  Spanish  minister  —  whose 
name  it  considered  unpronounceable  and  therefore  out 
landish  —  had  resigned,  following  some  unpleasantness 
at  Washington;  "Dupuy  de  Lome,  gone  home,  no 
more  to  roam  !"  the  comic  editor  facetiously  chanted ; 
L  145 


146  VAN   CLEVE: 

and  that  a  bomb  had  exploded  in  the  Hotel  Inglaterra 
in  the  city  of  Havana,  and  another  bomb  in  the 
mayor's  office ;  and  that  one  of  our  big  battleships  had 
been  sent  down  there  to  protect  American  interests. 

Then  came  the  morning  of  the  16th  of  February 
with  some  appalling  news.  Bob  Gilbert's  paper,  being 
an  afternoon  one,  did  not  get  that  " scoop";  but  it 
made  a  gallant  effort  and  came  out  at  noon  with 
mighty  head-lines  and  exclamation  points,  with  columns 
of  information  or  misinformation,  with  pictures  of  the 
unfortunate  vessel,  her  captain  and  officers,  and  com 
plete  details  about  the  Maine's  size,  "  displacement," 
"  armament/'  cost,  and  previous  career.  Bob  himself 
fell  into  the  wildest  state  of  excitement ;  it  kept  him 
sober  for  a  week  !  He  wanted  to  organize  a  body  of 
militia,  wanted  to  telegraph  all  sorts  of  incendiary 
messages  to  our  Ohio  congressmen  and  senators,  to 
our  Ohio  President  himself,  wanted  to  rush  down  to 
Cuba  and  lend  his  whole  strength  to  avenging  our  un 
lucky  brave  lads.  To  be  sure,  he  was  not  the  only  one 
who  lost  his  head  and  fumed  and  fretted  and  girded 
at  the  Administration,  and  denounced  the  investiga 
tions  as  cowardly  and  farcical  delays.  "Ten  thousand 
Ohio  troops  could  be  landed  in  Cuba  in  three  days  !" 
the  papers  proclaimed ;  we  lived  to  know  better,  and, 
dismal  to  relate,  not  one  single  Ohio  troop  or  trooper 
ever  struck  a  blow  on  the  island,  or  for  it,  but  at  least 
the  will  was  not  lacking.  Within  a  week  of  the  dis 
aster  there  were  militia-companies  drilling  furiously 
all  over  the  State,  and  all  over  every  other  State  in  the 
Union ;  there  were  fiery  speeches  on  the  floor  of  every 
Legislature ;  at  a  matinee  performance  in  Daly's 
Theatre  in  the  city  of  New  York,  the  entire  audience, 
acting  on  some  inexplicable  spontaneous  impulse,  arose 
and  sang  the  Star-Spangled  Banner,  the  orchestra 
joining  in  with  equal  fervor ;  and  at  a  big  public  ban 
quet,  while  the  temper  of  the  Administration  still 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  147 

seemed  to  be  for  peace,  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  the 
Navy  got  up  and  made  a  speech  of  such  strength  and 
significance  that  everybody  present  nudged  his  neigh 
bor,  and  one  gentleman  went  so  far  as  to  say  to  the 
presiding  genius  of  the  gathering,  "Mr.  Hanna,  may 
we  please  fight  Spain  now?"  So,  at  any  rate,  the 
newspapers  reported. 

"Who  is  he  ?  That  Navy  man,  I  mean  ? "  old  Mrs. 
Van  Cleve  asked,  when  this  item  was  read  out  to  her ; 
her  eyes  had  been  failing  lately ;  and  Evelyn  gave  the 
name. 

"Humph!  I'm  not  much  wiser  now  than  I  was 
before  !"  the  old  lady  remarked.  I  am  afraid  we  did 
not  know  as  much  as  we  should  have  about  the  public 
servants,  either  their  names  or  stations. 

Mr.  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  so  far  as  was  known,  made 
but  one  comment  on  the  situation.  "I  guess  we  can't 
get  out  of  it  without  a  fight ;  and  if  we  do  have  war, 
wheat  ought  to  jump  some,"  he  said ;  and  studied  the 
market  reports  and  gave  closer  attention  to  business 
than  ever,  these  days.  The  news  that  troops  of  the 
regular  army  had  actually  been  ordered  to  Key  West, 
that  some  millions  of  dollars  had  been  voted  for  "de 
fence,"  that  the  Oregon  had  started  for  Cape  Horn  and 
Atlantic  waters,  that  the  Vizcaya  had  anchored  off 
Manhattan  Island  (to  the  terror  of  the  unprotected 
Manhattanese  !),  the  talk  about  the  Philippines,  with 
consequent  searchings  of  the  map,  and  the  Pacific 
Squadron,  the  withdrawal  of  the  United  States  consul 
from  Havana,  and  of  Mr.  Woodford  from  the  Embassy 
at  Madrid  —  all  this  news  and  all  the  heroic  excitement 
of  the  times  affected  Van  Cleve  not  in  the  least.  The 
young  man  was  not  unpatriotic ;  he  had  as  much  pride 
and  spirit  as  any  of  his  fellows,  and,  it  cannot  be  doubted, 
heard  the  songs  and  speeches  and  saw  the  massed 
soldiery  under  the  banner  of  his  country  with  an 
honorable  stirring  of  the  heart.  But  whatever  befell, 


148  VAN   CLEVE: 

—  and,  like  the  rest  of  us,  he  had  a  hearty  belief  in  the 
power  of  our  arms  and  an  unshakable  expectation  of 
success,  —  Van  must  still  stay  at  home  and  make  a 
living  for  himself  and  those  dependent  on  him.  Not 
his  would  ever  be  adventure  and  glory,  nor  for  him 
the  " bright  face  of  danger";  and  though  he  would 
probably  have  done  his  duty  manfully  on  the  pitched 
field,  he  recognized  (perhaps  with  regret)  that  the 
homespun  career  was  the  one  for  which  he  was  best 
fitted.  He  was  in  odd  contrast  to  that  time-honored 
warrior,  Major  Stanton,  who,  if  his  age  and  state  of 
health  had  not  prohibited  it,  as  he  was  careful  to  assure 
everybody,  would  have  been  the  first  to  offer  himself 
to  the  Cause.  "It's  hard  for  us  —  hard!  We  old 
fellows  that  went  out  for  the  Union  in  sixty-one  — 
hard  to  be  shelved  now  !"  he  would  say  with  a  mag 
nificent  break  in  his  voice,  and  wagging  the  grizzled 
whiskers  sadly.  It  was  an  impressive  spectacle,  and 
Major  Van  Cleve  was  very  popular  on  all  political- 
military  occasions,  where,  indeed,  he  cut  an  admirable 
figure  and  exercised  handsomely  his  fine  gift  of  elo 
quence.  Once  or  twice  he  appeared  in  his  pathetic, 
old,  faded,  blue  uniform  of  the  Nine  Hundredth  Ohio, 
with  prodigious  effect.  Van  Cleve  did  not  attend  these 
assemblies ;  and  was  rather  gruff  and  short  with  the 
people  who  spoke  enthusiastically  to  him  about  his 
uncle's  imposing  presence  and  oratory. 

Van  Cleve's  family,  by  the  way,  were  going  to  New 
York  to  live  !  The  news  created  an  interest  in  their 
set  of  acquaintances  hardly  second  to  that  roused  by 
the  international  complications.  They  had  a  dozen 
reasons  for  going,  any  one  of  them  unanswerable  - 
Mrs.  Lucas's  health,  the  possibility  of  much  greater 
economy  in  living,  —  in  such  a  city  as  New  York,  one 
can  live  any  way  one  chooses,  as  is  well  known,  —  a 
wider  sphere  for  Evelyn,  a  more  appreciative  public, 
and  a  thoroughly  artistic  atmosphere  —  they  recited 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  149 

all  these  arguments  with  their  customary  fervor  and 
certainty.  Evelyn  had  gone  East  ahead  of  the  others 
and  found  an  apartment,  three  rooms  with  one  large 
room  that  would  just  do  for  a  studio  and  sitting-room 
with  a  folding  bed,  you  know ;  it  was  on  a  street  just 
off  of  Washington  Square,  in  one  of  those  old-fashioned 
New  York  houses  remodelled  and  turned  into  flats  — 
so  picturesque  I  They  would  only  need  a  few  things, 
and  expected  to  get  beautiful  pieces  of  furniture,  old 
mahogany  and  so  on,  second  hand,  for  a  song;  it  was 
merely  a  matter  of  knowing  where  to  go,  and  Evelyn 
and  her  artist  friends  of  course  had  made  a  study  of 
that.  Nobody  could  justifiably  accuse  these  ladies  of 
extravagance  or  imprudence ;  they  counted  their 
pennies  with  the  utmost  care,  and  were  adepts  in 
all  the  feminine  arts  of  saving  and  management.  It 
developed  that  Van  Cleve  was  not  intending  to  move 
with  them;  they  explained  that  he  couldn't  give  up 
his  position  here,  of  course ;  but  equally,  of  course, 
they  wouldn't  be  so  selfish  as  to  walk  off  and  leave 
him  without  knowing  that  he  was  perfectly  comfort 
able;  and  accordingly  a  wonderful,  ideal,  Elysian 
boarding-house  had  been  discovered  where  they  kept 
such  a  table,  and  he  would  have  such  a  room,  so  large, 
light,  and  sunny ! 

Van  had  made  no  comment  on  these  arrangements ; 
the  women,  indeed,  wondered  and  were  aggrieved  at  his 
unsympathetic  silence ;  it  was  true  that  he  gave  them 
ungrudgingly  whatever  money  they  asked  for,  —  and  in 
fairness  it  must  be  said  they  asked  for  as  little  as  pos 
sible,  —  but  he  paid  no  heed  to  their  explanations,  he 
took  no  interest  in  the  plans  they  made  either  for 
themselves  or  for  his  own  comfort.  He  would  not 
even  go  to  look  at  the  matchless  boarding-house. 
"  Why,  I  suppose  it's  all  right,  if  you  say  so  —  it'll  be  just 
as  good  as  home,"  he  said,  cheerfully  indifferent. 

"  Van  Cleve,  how  can  you  say  such  a  thing  ?    As  if  any 


150  VAN  CLEVE: 

place  could  be  the  same  as  your  own  home!"  they  ex 
claimed  in  reproachful  chorus ;  nor  could  they  at  all  un 
derstand  why  he  laughed.  They  said  to  each  other  that 
Van  Cleve  was  getting  more  and  more  wrapped  up  in 
his  affairs  —  it  would  end  by  making  him  hard  and 
selfish  —  he  might  even  become  miserly  ! 

It  is  strange  to  think  that  such  small  doings  as  these 
can  go  on  side  by  side  with  the  great  stirring  business 
of  the  nation  on  the  edge  of  war,  and  receive  within 
their  own  circle  quite  as  much  attention.  People  did 
not  cease  to  be  interested  in  spring  wardrobes  and 
summer  trips,  in  weddings  and  new  houses  and  house- 
cleaning  and  the  Musical  Festival ;  everybody,  I  re 
peat,  thought  and  talked  as  much  as  ever  about  these 
things  that  month  of  April,  as  if  nothing  of  moment 
had  been  going  forward.  And  on  there  at  Washington, 
the  debate  about  arbitration  and  intervention  rumbled 
on,  and  the  Senate  recognized  Cuba,  and  the  President 
called  out  the  troops,  and  the  Ultimatum  was  issued 
and  forestalled ;  and  that  energetic  Assistant  Secretary 
of  the  Navy  resigned  and  set  about  forming  his  regi 
ment  of  Rough  Riders.  The  last  did  really  touch  us 
closer,  for  here  and  there  we  heard  of  some  prospective 
recruit  or  aspirant  for  that  body,  somebody's  cousin  or 
brother,  some  young  fellow  at  Harvard  or  ranching  it 
out  West ;  one  of  the  rumors  credited  that  young  Cort- 
wright,  —  Phil  Cortwright  that  was  with  Steinberger 
&  Hirsch,  —  Lorrie  Gilbert's  Mr.  Cortwright,  with 
ambitions  in  that  direction.  Nobody  was  surprised  to 
hear  it ;  he  was  a  dashing  sort  of  fellow  and  would  make 
a  first-rate  cavalryman  —  any  man  that  came  out  of 
Kentucky  could  ride  and  shoot,  for  that  matter.  Cort 
wright  could  probably  get  a  commission  with  ease ;  at 
any  rate,  he  was  going  to  Washington  to  make  a  try 
for  it,  everybody  presently  understood.  Washington 
was  brimming  over  with  gentlemen  of  like  aims  from 
every  part  of  the  country,  and  there  was  a  great  pull- 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  151 

ing  of  wires ;  but  Cortwright  knew  the  congressman 
from  this  district  personally ;  he  was  related  to  the 
senior  senator  from  Kentucky ;  and,  moreover,  some  of 
us  had  a  private  idea  that  the  Ohio  candidates  might 
not  impossibly  be  the  favored  ones. 

Lorrie,  looking  a  little  pale,  but  sweetly  resolute  and 
cheerful,  confirmed  the  report.  "Yes.  He's  going. 
He  thinks  he  ought  to ;  he  wants  to  do  his  duty  - 
she  said  with  a  beautiful  pride  in  her  hero ;  she  had  no 
conception  of  the  tinsel  and  spot-light  allurements  this 
martial  drama  held  out  for  him,  as  for  nine-tenths  of 
the  other  young  fellows ;  and,  for  the  matter  of  that, 
when  this  brave,  eager,  self-centred  restlessness  over 
takes  a  man,  is  there  a  woman  on  earth  who  can  hold 
him?  Something  of  the  glamour  bedazzles  the  femi 
nine  eye,  too;  she  is  to  be  the  star,  the  solace,  and 
inspiration  just  as  she  was  five  hundred  years  ago  when 
the  knight  went  forth  with  her  favor  on  his  helmet ; 
and  perhaps  "I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
loved  I  not  honor  more,"  is  the  most  potent  argument 
ever  addressed  to  her. 

"I'd  go  myself  —  with  the  Red  Cross,  you  know  - 
if  Mother  thought  she  could  get  along  without  me. 
But  she  wants  me  here,  and  there  will  be  plenty  of 
women  that  can  go,"  said  Lorrie,  who  never  had  to 
explain  to  anybody  that  she  wanted  to  do  her  duty. 
"Bob's  going,  too  —  not  with  the  army  —  his  paper's 
sending  him.  He's  quite  wild  about  it,"  she  told 
people.  They  were  liable  to  remark  to  one  another 
afterwards  that  Bob  would  be  no  great  loss  whatever 
became  of  him,  but  the  way  those  things  generally 
turned  out,  a  fellow  like  Bob  came  through  it  all  scot- 
free  without  a  scratch  or  a  day's  sickness,  while  any 
number  of  fine,  useful  men  succumbed  right  away  to 
the  hardships  or  the  enemies'  bullets  ! 

Robert,  however,  showed  a  disposition  to  straighten 
up,  under  all  the  excitement,  queerly  enough ;  he  took 


152  VAN   CLEVE: 

himself  with  gratifying  seriousness  in  the  capacity 
of  war-correspondent  to  the  Record-World,  and  was 
too  absorbed  in  preparations  for  the  campaigning 
to  spare  any  time  to  his  former  disreputable  com 
pany  and  diversions.  In  the  beginning,  with  some 
idea  of  enlisting,  he  had  gone  and  got  himself 
examined  at  the  recruiting  station  for  the  regular 
army.  "  Those  are  the  fellows  that  are  sure  to 
go,  you  know,'7  he  said  cannily ;  and  he  came  away 
a  little  chop-fallen  at  being  rejected  by  the  doctor 
and  sergeant.  "Said  my  teeth  were  defective!  Did 
you  ever  hear  of  anything  so  fine-drawn  as  that?"  he 
told  Van  Cleve  in  a  comical  indignation.  "I  said  to 
the  sergeant,  'Why,  my  teeth  are  as  good  as  yours. 
I'll  bet  I  can  beat  you  chewing  any  day  ! '  He  had 
the  worst  old  yellow  grinders  you  ever  saw.  He  just 
laughed." 

" Teeth,  hey?"  said  Van  Cleve,  looking  the  other 
over  with  his  shrewd,  hard  gray  eyes;  "they  must 
make  a  pretty  searching  examination." 

"Oh,  yes,  you  have  to  strip,  of  course.  They  measure 
you  and  test  your  lungs,  and  you  have  to  come  up  to 
some  standard  they've  got.  The  doctor  said  I  was  a 
little  too  light  —  too  thin  for  my  height,  you  know, 
but  I  don't  think  that  would  have  made  any  trouble. 
I  told  him  I'd  make  it  my  business  to  get  heavier,  and 
he  kind  of  laughed.  He  asked  me  how  long  I'd  had 
this  cough,  too  —  it's  nothing  but  a  cold  I've  had  off 
and  on  this  winter  —  and  I  noticed  him  thumping 
around  my  chest ;  that  shows  you  how  particular  they 
are.  That's  all  right,  too ;  I'm  not  kicking  about  that. 
They've  got  to  have  sound  men  physically  in  the  army. 
But  teeth  —  piffle!"  Robert  ejaculated  disgustedly. 
"Well,  as  long  as  I'm  going  anyhow,  for  the  paper, 
I've  got  the  laugh  on  'em.  But  to  be  with  the  army 
itself  would  be  more  fun." 

Van  Cleve  listened  to  him  with  an  extraordinary 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  153 

inward  movement  of  affection  and  pity ;  there  were 
times  when  he  felt  old  enough  to  be  Bob's  father. 
"Well,  you  want  to  fatten  up  and  —  and  get  rid  of 
your  cold  so  as  to  be  in  first-class  shape,  because  it's 
bound  to  be  a  good  deal  like  hard  work  part  of  the 
time,  anyhow,"  he  advised  Robert.  But  when  they  had 
parted,  he  shook  his  head  over  the  teeth  episode.  "I 
shouldn't  wonder  if  they  said  that  to  every  poor  devil 
they  reject,  rather  than  tell  him  right  out  what  the 
matter  is  with  him,"  he  opined  sagely;  and  wondered 
if  the  humanity  of  doctors  was  not  sometimes  ill- 
judged.  It  did  not  need  a  doctor's  experience  to  see 
at  a  glance  what  sort  of  a  fellow  Bob  was ;  the  pace  he 
went  was  beginning  to  tell  on  him;  and  even  if  he 
behaved  himself,  he  was  not  of  the  type  wanted  in  the 
United  States  army. 

Bob's  mother  and  sister,  who  had  awaited  the  ver 
dict  in  terror,  were  too  much  relieved  to  sympathize 
with  him ;  his  position  was  likely  to  be  exciting  and 
hazardous  enough,  anyhow,  they  thought.  Mrs.  Gil 
bert  was  never  seen  to  shed  a  tear,  or  heard  to  utter  a 
word  in  opposition ;  she  used  to  follow  him  to  the  door 
whenever  he  left  the  house,  and  watch  him  every  step 
of  the  road,  if  he  went  no  farther  than  the  corner  or 
across  the  street.  When  he  was  at  home,  she  would 
be  forever  visiting  his  room  on  slight  errands,  even 
slipping  in  like  a  small,  gentle,  noiseless  ghost  at  any 
hour  of  the  night,  to  look  at  him  while  he  slept,  as  she 
had  when  he  was  a  little  boy  in  his  crib  years  ago. 
All  the  things  he  liked  to  eat  were  constantly  on  the 
table ;  and  the  mother  even  went  so  far  as  to  rout  out 
a  photograph  of  Paula  Jameson  in  a  striking  pose  like 
a  variety  actress,  a  photograph  that  Mrs.  Gilbert  cor 
dially  detested,  and  restore  it  to  the  place  on  Bob's 
bureau,  whence  she  had  removed  it  in  a  temper  six 
months  before!  "I  want  him  to  remember  every 
thing  pleasantly,"  she  said  to  Lorrie.  Robert  himself 


154  VAN   CLEVE: 

was  quite  unconscious  or  unobservant  of  these  efforts, 
though  he  was  kind  after  his  fashion. 

"  Don't  you  worry,  Moms,  correspondents  never  get 
hurt.  They  don't  have  to  stand  up  to  be  fired  at,  you 
know  —  they  can  run  like  rabbits,  when  they  get 
scared,  and  nobody  blames  'em,"  he  said,  in  a  laugh 
ing  but  sincere  attempt  to  reassure  her.  "  There's  no 
Roman  soldier,  nor  boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck  about 
me.  I'll  bet  the  first  volley  I  hear  I'll  establish  a  new 
world's  record  for  the  running  high  jump.  I'll  land 
somewhere  in  the  next  county,  and  I  won't  get  back 
till  New  Year's!" 

"No,  you  won't  run,  Bob ;  you'd  never  run  away  in 
the  wide  world!"  cried  his  mother,  flushing  all  over 
her  pretty,  faded  face;  and  though  she  joined  in  the 
laugh  against  herself,  the  flush  remained.  The  Vir 
ginia  woman  remembered  the  Shenandoah  and  the 
guns  of  Chancellorsville.  It  was  with  faces  of  resolute 
calm  that  she  and  his  sister  kissed  the  young  man  good- 
by  the  morning  he  started  for  Tampa  and  "the  front"  ; 
his  father  wrung  his  hand ;  the  little  boys  of  the  neigh 
borhood  hung  around,  and  scrabbled  for  the  honor  of 
carrying  his  suit  case ;  Mrs.  Gilbert  watched  him  down 
the  street  for  the  last  time ;  and  he  swung  on  to  the 
rear  platform  of  the  trolley  car,  and  his  figure  lessened 
in  the  distance  waving  his  new  Panama  hat.  Down  at 
the  Louisville  and  Nashville  station,  here  was  Van 
Cleve  Kendrick,  that  stoic  and  cynic  and  temperance 
lecturer,  with  a  box  of  cigars  and  some  kind  of  wonderful 
confection  in  leather  and  nickel  plate  combining  a 
a  knife,  fork,  spoon,  cup,  flask,  and  goodness  knows 
what  else,  for  camp  use  !  He  thrust  the  gifts  confusedly 
upon  Bob  while  they  bade  each  other  good-by. —  "Well, 
so  long,  Van!"  -"Here's  luck,  Bob!"  —  it  was  a 
simple  ceremony.  The  train-shed  was  crowded  with  a 
great  rush  of  arriving  and  departing  travellers,  not  a  few 
military-looking  gentlemen  with  military-looking  lug- 


PUS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  155 

gage  among  them,  for  these  were  war  times.  On  Bob's 
own  train,  there  were  a  score  of  newspaper  men  bent 
on  similar  business  —  jolly  fellows  all;  his  kind,  gay, 
boyish  face  shone  on  Van  Cleve  from  the  midst  of 
them ;  the  train  pulled  out ;  and  Van  walked  off  to  the 
office,  perhaps  envying  them  a  little. 

In  the  meanwhile  Lome's  Mr.  Cortwright  got  his 
appointment,  according  to  his  confident  expectation, 
and  came  back  to  her  in  high  spirits.  He  had  seen  and 
had  interviews  with  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of 
War;  he  was  to  " report  for  duty"  at  such  and  such  a 
place,  such  and  such  a  date;  he  was  planning  his 
baggage ;  he  had  his  photograph  taken  in  uniform  for 
Lorrie  ;  the  girls  used  to  see  it  standing  on  her  dressing 
table,  looking  more  than  ever  reckless  and  handsome, 
and  said  to  one  another  that  it  was  a  pity  he  hadn't 
always  been  in  the  army,  it  seemed  to  suit  him  so  well 
somehow,  he  appeared  to  so  much  advantage  as  a 
military  man.  Some  of  her  friends  may  have  even 
envied  Lorrie  her  romantic  position;  and  in  truth  I 
am  not  sure  that  in  spite  of  her  miserable  moments  of 
apprehension  for  him,  these  last  few  weeks  may  not 
have  been  the  happiest  Lorrie  had  ever  spent  with  her 
lover.  He  had  never  been  so  devoted,  so  thoughtful 
and  tender;  and  when  the  dreaded  time  of  parting 
came,  spoke  to  her  in  a  fashion  that  became  him  well, 
gravely  and  manfully.  "  You're  a  deal  too  good  for 
me,  my  dear ;  it  makes  me  ashamed  to  see  you  care  so 
much,"  he  said,  with  real  humility;  the  depth  of  her 
feeling,  for  the  first  time  revealed,  surprised  and  touched 
and  a  little  awed  Philip.  "I  —  I  almost  wish  you 
didn't  care  so  much,"  he  stammered  nervously;  and 
he  did  not  offer  to  kiss  her  neck  now,  but  instead  took 
her  hand  and  laid  it  against  his  lips  with  something 
like  reverence.  "  I  wish  —  I  wish — !"  He  was  silent, 
looking  down  in  a  swift,  passing,  useless  pain  and  shame 
and  regret.  After  all,  he  told  himself,  he  wasn't  much 


156  VAN   CLEVE: 

worse  than  the  next  man  —  men  couldn't  help  some 
things  —  and  anyhow  that  life  was  all  over  and  done 
with  forever  for  him  now  —  no  use  bewailing  the 
spilled  milk  —  the  thing  was  to  live  straight  from  this 
on,  and  be  worthy  of  this  splendid  girl.  Lorrie  and  he 
would  be  married  —  they  would  have  children  —  ! 
He  kissed  her  and  held  her  close  in  honest  pride  and 
tenderness. 

"I'm  not  going  to  be  silly  any  more  —  I  didn't 
mean  to  be  silly  at  all  —  only  I  c-couldn't  quite  help 
it,"  said  Lorrie,  bravely,  swallowing  the  rest  of  her 
sobs,  and  raising  her  head  from  his  shoulder.  "And 
you  may  not  be  in  any  battles,  anyway  !"  she  added, 
so  naively  hopeful  that  Cortwright  laughed  aloud. 

"  That's  right,  little  woman.  I'm  going  to  come 
back  all  right,"  he  said  gayly ;  "but  when  it's  over,  I 
believe  I'll  stay  in  the  army;  I  could  get  into  the 
regulars,  I  think.  A  lot  of  the  volunteer  officers  did 
after  the  Civil  War,  didn't  they  ?  I'll  stay  in  the  army 
and  end  up  a  Major-general.  That'll  be  better  than 
pegging  along  with  old  Leo  Hirsch,  hey?  Give  me 
one  more  kiss,  Mrs.  Major-general !" 

He  went  off  buoyantly,  with  his  head  up  and  a  free 
step,  in  his  familiar,  carelessly  graceful  style;  and 
Lorrie,  standing  on  the  steps,  looked  after  him,  strained 
her  eyes  after  him  as  every  woman  has  looked  and 
strained  her  eyes  some  time  in  her  life  after  some  man 
since  this  world  began  its  journey  through  the  stars. 
It  happened  to  be  a  Sunday  morning,  the  first  of  May, 
very  leafy,  green,  fresh,  and  warm ;  people  were  coming 
home  from  church,  and  children  skipping  on  the  pave 
ments.  Lorrie  thought  she  would  remember  it  to  her 
last  hour. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MRS.  AND  Miss  JAMESON  AT  HOME 

THAT  date  of  the  first  of  May,  eighteen-ninety-eight, 
was  to  be  a  much  more  memorable  one  even  than  poor 
Lorrie,  restlessly  following  her  sweetheart  on  his  jour 
ney,  through  all  the  wan  watches  of  the  night,  dreamed. 
For,  by  dawn  of  the  next  day,  when  he  and  many  an 
other  girl's  sweetheart,  and  hundreds  of  husbands  and 
brothers  besides,  were  long  miles  to  the  south,  or 
already  there  down  on  the  Gulf,  there  went  blazing 
through  the  country  the  tidings  of  the  battle  in  Manila 
harbor.  The  newspapers  screamed  jubilantly,  and  for 
once  acceptably ;  a  generation  may  not  witness  more 
than  one  such  event.  Old  Glory  flapped  triumphantly 
from  a  thousand  flagstaffs,  fireworks  roared  and  bon 
fires  flamed.  Remember  the  Maine!  No  danger, 
they'd  remember  it  now  fast  enough!  "I  can't  help 
feeling  sorry  for  poor  old  Spain  !"  Bob  Gilbert  wrote 
from  Tampa,  to  the  touched  amusement  of  the  family  ; 
that  was  like  Bob,  they  thought  fondly,  like  his  good 
nature,  his  pliant  humanity. 

The  young  man  was  for  a  while  very  diligent  about 
writing ;  Lorrie  has  a  bundle  of  his  war  letters  locked 
away  in  a  drawer  this  minute.  They  have  got  to  look 
ing  worn  and  dust-soiled  in  these  ten  years,  and  the 
ink  which  Bob  managed  to  scatter  about  in  such  pro 
fusion  with  his  great,  sprawling,  loose-jointed  hand  that 
always  had  such  a  schoolboy  air,  is  faded  to  a  kind  of 
rust  color;  and  I  suppose  they  are  not  written  in  a 

157 


158  VAN   CLEVE: 

very  high  literary  style,  being  merely  the  headlong 
scribbling  full  of  fun  and  nonsense  and  spirit  you  might 
expect  from  Bob.  He  was  plainly  so  well  suited  with 
his  present  life,  its  cinematograph  changes,  its  rough- 
and-ready  shifts,  even  its  physical  hardships,  that  one 
could  not  but  feel  a  certain  hopefulness  for  him.  Bob 
was  keeping  straight ;  maybe  he  had  found  himself  at 
last,  and  this  was  all  he  needed  to  make  a  man  of  him. 
It  had  been  a  toilsome  trip,  he  wrote ;  everything  dis 
arranged  or  " congested'7  by  the  army  trains,  nothing 
running  anywhere  on  schedule  time,  all  kinds  of  delays, 
eat  whenever  you  got  a  chance,  and  sleep  if  you  dared  ! 
Tampa,  of  course,  was  chockful ;  he  was  bunking  with 
some  other  newspaper  men  in  the  office  of  the  Daily 
Mail,  corner  of  Twiggs  Street  (address  him  there). 
They  slept  on  the  floor.  Tell  Moms  not  to  worry ;  he 
had  a  blanket,  and  there  was  a  place  where  they  could 
wash  up,  and  it  was  too  roasting  hot  for  anybody  to 
catch  cold ;  his  cough  was  almost  gone.  As  for  Florida 
-  give  him  little  old  Ohio  !  The  tropic  scenery  didn't 
come  up  to  specifications.  For  one  thing,  the  palms 
were  a  fizzle.  Instead  of  being  a  nice,  tall,  smooth, 
tapering  trunk  like  a  porch  column,  they  were  all 
swelled  out  in  the  middle  like  an  Adam's  apple  on  a 
giraffe  —  "I  wouldn't  give  one  of  our  buckeyes  for  the 
whole  outfit  of  palms  in  Florida  !"  .  .  .  "  Every  thing 
down  here  is  Plant's  or  Flagler's ;  they  own  the  State 
between  them.  You  ought  to  see  the  Tampa  Bay 
Hotel,  the  one  Plant  spent  so  many  millions  on.  It 
looks  like  Aladdin's  Palace  done  in  cake  or  butter  or 
something,  like  the  models  of  the  World's  Fair  build 
ings  the  chef  at  the  Queen  City  Club  made  one  New 
Year's,  don't  you  remember,  Lorrie?  All  the  high 
chief  muck-a-mucks  are  staying  there,  and  have  their 
offices  and  headquarters ;  I  saw  Lawton  and  Roosevelt 
together.  ..."  "The  other  night  two  or  three  hun 
dred  army  mules  that  they've  got  in  a  kind  of  mule 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  159 

barracks  down  at  the  foot  of  Franklin  Street,  got  loose 
somehow  and  went  stampeding  in  close  formation 
through  the  town,  like  Bedlam  letting  go.  Every 
body  turned  out  and  thought  the  Spanish  were 
coming !" 

During  succeeding  days,  the  correspondence  fell  off; 
but  that  was  only  natural,  considering  the  progress  of 
the  events  which  Robert  had  been  detailed  to  watch. 
Even  Lome's  other  letters,  which  had  at  first  been  of  a 
daily  regularity,  gradually  ceased  to  come,  although 
Lieutenant  Cortwright  must  have  had  time  to  spare, 
for  he  had  complained  bitterly  of  the  state  of  inaction 
in  which  the  Army  was  being  kept,  while  the  Navy  was 
"right  on  the  job,"  and  "  some  thing  happening  every 
day"  ;  and  he  railed  at  the  Administration,  and  proph 
esied  disastrous  failure  for  a  campaign  conducted  with 
so  notable  a  lack  of  spirit  and  "push."  Lorrie  thought 
with  a  kind  of  adoring  and  delighted  terror  how  brave 
and  reckless  and  altogether  demigod-like  her  hero  was. 
It  was  her  brother's  opinion,  too,  that  the  Navy  was 
getting  all  the  best  of  it.  "They  landed  some  marines 
at  a  place  on  the  coast  somewhere,  called  Cienfuegos, 
and  had  a  fight  —  don't  know  how  much  of  a  one. 
It's  the  talk  here  that  the  troops  are  to  be  embarked 
to-morrow  —  everybody  perfectly  crazy  to  go,  of 
course,  but  only  the  regulars  and  the  70th  New  York, 
and  perhaps  some  of  ours  to  be  taken.  The  censorship 
is  something  fierce;  not  half  that  goes  on  gets  in  the 
papers ;  he  just  blue-pencils  it,  you  know,  even  private 
telegrams ;  I  believe  they  look  at  all  of  the  messages 
going  either  way,  they  want  to  spot  the  cipher  ones 
presumably.  .  .  .  The  Porter  brought  in  another  prize 
ship  this  morning,  I  heard.  That  must  make  about 
the  twentieth ;  I've  lost  count.  Wish  I  was  a  midship- 
mite  or  a  bo'sun  tight,  or  a  somebody  with  a  cheerily 
my  lads,  yo  ho  !  This  prize  business  is  as  easy  as  roll 
ing  off  a  log.  Saw  Cort  again  yesterday.  Nothing 


160  VAN   CLEVE: 

doing  in  his  regiment ,"  Bob  wrote  in  one  of  the  last 
letters  they  had  from  him. 

Spring  flowered  abundantly;  the  noisy,  joyous- 
fearful  days  went  by  with  new  wild  reports  for  almost 
every  hour  of  them.  The  State  troops  began  to  be 
more  and  more  restless  and  aggrieved  at  Chattanooga 
and  the  other  points  of  concentration.  Nothing  ma 
terial  seemed  to  be  happening  in  Cuba.  The  Oregon 
arrived  happily  and  joined  the  blockading  squadron; 
more  prizes  were  pounced  upon  and  victoriously  herded 
in.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Spanish  men-of-war  and 
the  torpedo  flotilla  about  which  such  dire  misgivings 
had  been  aroused  in  the  beginning,  vanished  from  the 
face  of  the  waters  !  They  were  at  Cape  Verde,  they 
were  at  Porto  Rico,  they  were  at  home,  whence  they 
had  never  departed,  they  were  hiding  in  some  corner, 
they  were  scouring  the  high  seas,  they  were  nowhere  at 
all!  And  "Quo  Vadis  hades  Cadiz  navies ?"  blithely 
inquired  the  comic  journalist,  who  was  as  much  to  the 
fore  as  ever.  To  the  ordinary  laymen  and  non-com 
batant,  the  host  of  American  gentlemen  of  letters, 
short-story  writers,  long-story  writers,  magazine  con 
tributors,  and  newspaper  correspondents  appeared  to 
be  the  strongest  and  most  active  force  at  this  moment 
menacing  Cuba. 

Notwithstanding  their  presence  and  efforts,  it  was 
June  before  the  location  of  the  unlucky  " Cadiz  navies" 
was  ascertained  to  be  the  harbor  of  Santiago.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  month  Lorrie  got  a  letter  from  her 
brother  —  the  first  in  two  or  three  weeks  —  written 
from  Key  West,  in  the  wildest  spirits.  Bob  had  been 
cruising  on  one  of  the  press  boats,  the  Milton  D. 
Bowers,  right  off  the  coast  of  Cuba  —  right  among  the 
Fleet !  So-and-So  of  Such-a-paper  and  So-and-So 
of  Such-another  were  on  the  boat ;  he  named  the 
journalistic  giants  with  pride.  He  was  to  go  again  in 
a  few  days ;  it  depended  on  what  happened.  He  had 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  161 

been  too  busy  to  write  —  sorry  !  —  but  tell  Moms  he 
had  not  yet  been  in  the  slightest  danger,  and  wasn't 
likely  to  be  unless  he  deliberately  went  after  it,  and 
you  might  trust  little  Percival  not  to  do  that.  And  he 
couldn't  tell  them  where  to  address  their  letters,  he 
had  no  idea  where  he  might  be  within  a  few  hours ; 
better  send  to  the  Tampa  address,  as  heretofore. 

Lorrie  read  the  letter  to  her  mother,  both  of  them 
smiling  and  interested  and  uneasy  as  they  sat  in  the 
side  porch  in  the  summer  morning  under  the  honey 
suckle  vine  which  was  all  fragrant  and  thick  with 
bloom ;  and  old  Dingo,  spread  out  peaceably  in  the 
patch  of  sunlight  at  their  feet,  stirred  and  cocked  up 
his  good  brown  head  and  ears  as  she  finished.  "I 
believe  he  knows  we  were  reading  something  from  Bob," 
said  Lorrie.  She  spoke  to  the  dog.  "Yes,  you're 
right,  it's  Bob's  letter.  Look,  Dingo,  Bob's  letter!" 

"I'm  more  afraid  of  those  dreadful  camp  diseases 
and  the  water  they  have  to  drink  than  of  anything 
else,"  said  the  mother,  with  her  anxious,  sweet  face. 
"He  doesn't  say  anything  about  how  he's  living  now. 
Do  you  suppose  he  has  had  to  sleep  on  the  decks  or 
out  of  doors  somewhere,  with  his  clothes  on  ?  Bob 
isn't  very  strong,  and  he  —  he  doesn't  always  take  care 
of  himself." 

It  was  the  only  way  in  which  the  two  Gilbert  women 
ever  hinted  to  each  other  of  Bob's  chief  failing.  Lorrie 
looked  worried;  she  had  more  than  once  wondered 
how  it  was  with  Bob  down  there  in  the  camp  where 
men  must  be  living  every  way  and  any  way ;  in  spite 
of  her  common-sense,  and  his  excuses,  the  increasing 
gaps  between  his  letters  obscurely  alarmed  her.  Philip's 
letters  were  scanty,  too,  but  then  there  were  reasons 
why  Philip  could  not  write ;  his  duties  — 

Dingo  growled  again  amicably,  and  rose,  wagging; 
and  a  shadow  came  across  the  plot  of  sunshine.  Mrs. 
Gilbert  gave  a  jump  and  exclamation ;  she  was  nervous 


162  VAN  CLEVE: 

these  days,  and  the  unexpected  appearance  of  a  visitor 
startled  her  unduly.  "Why,  Paula !"  she  ejaculated 
the  next  moment ;  "  where  did  you  drop  from  ?  Why, 
we  didn't  even  know  you  were  in  town  !  Why,  Paula  ! 
You  came  stealing  up  like  a  little  ghost.  When  did 
you  get  back  ?  Did  you  have  a  nice  time  ?" 

"It  was  in  the  paper  Sunday,  Mother ;  didn't  you  see 
it?"  cried  Lorrie;  and  sprang  up  and  would  have 
kissed  the  other,  but  that  Paula,  who  after  her  sudden 
arrival  had  stood  for  a  second  quite  motionless  staring 
abstractedly  at  both  of  them,  now  stooped  or  turned 
aside  and  dropped  down  into  the  nearest  chair  with 
out  making  any  movement  to  return  the  salute.  Lorrie 
was  still  standing  almost  awkwardly,  in  her  surprise. 
One  might  have  said  the  girl  had  intentionally  evaded 
her.  Paula  was  arrayed  in  her  familiar  style  of  over- 
ornamentation,  the  pale  blue  fabric  of  her  dress  all 
but  obscured  by  embroidery  and  cascading  laces ; 
through  the  sheer  folds  of  the  waist  there  was  visible 
yet  more  embroidery  threaded  with  pink  ribbons, 
delicately  enticing.  Her  hat  was  a  cloud  of  flowers, 
butterflies,  rhinestone  buckles,  chiffon  rosettes ;  she 
had  correct  white  silk  gloves,  correct  white  canvas 
shoes ;  enough  must  have  been  spent  on  the  toilette, 
one  would  have  supposed,  to  make  even  Paula  su 
premely  happy,  but  she  did  not  look  happy.  Her 
Dresden-china  face  wore  a  fretful  and  tired  expression 
oddly  out  of  place  on  it. 

"We  got  back  Saturday;  they  didn't  get  the  right 
day  in  the  paper,"  she  said  in  a  wearily  complaining 
voice ;  "and  they  said  we'd  been  in  Atlantic  City  ever 
since  we  left  Palm  Beach,  and  we  hadn't  at  all.  We 
were  in  Atlantic  City,  but  we've  been  in  New  York 
for  four  weeks.  I  wish  we  hadn't  come  home.  I  didn't 
want  to  come  home.  There  isn't  anybody  here  I  want 
to  see.  Isn't  it  horrid  and  hot  ?  Oh,  I  am  so  tired  !" 

Lorrie  and  her  mother  —  of  whose  greeting  and  ex- 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  163 

tended  hand  Miss  Jameson  had  taken  no  notice  - 
surveyed  her  in  a  momentary  silence,  each  thinking 
the  same  thought  with  a  certain  compassion ;  namely, 
that  the  poor  child  had  never  been  taught  any  manners, 
and  not  being  clever  or  observant  or  perhaps  fine- 
natured  enough  to  acquire  them  of  herself,  the  lack 
would  show  more  and  more  as  she  got  older.  The  pause, 
brief  as  it  was,  startled  her  self-consciousness. 

" What's  the  matter?  What  are  you  both  looking 
at  me  that  way  for  ?  Don't  I  look  all  right  ?  Do  I 
-don't  I  —  is  there  anything  the  matter  with  me?" 
she  demanded  sharply,  darting  a  glance  full  of  suspicion 
from  one  to  the  other ;  and  straightened  her  figure 
with  an  effort ;  she  had  allowed  herself  to  droop  heavily 
in  the  Professor's  wide,  rough,  old  splint-bottomed 
chair.  And  she  began  to  make  nervous,  fluttering 
gestures  about  her  hair  and  flowery  hat  and  laces  and 
ribbons.  "Do  tell  me  if  I  don't  look  right  anywhere  !" 
she  entreated. 

"Your  dress  is  all  right,  my  dear;  it's  so  pretty  we 
couldn't  help  staring  at  it,  that's  all.  And  your  hat 
is  on  straight,  don't  worry!"  said  Mrs.  Gilbert, 
hastily,  a  good  deal  amused  at  this  characteristic 
anxiety.  "But  you  do  look  tired,  Paula,"  she  added 
in  a  kind  concern ;  ' '  you  must  have  been  doing  too 
much." 

"Oh,  no  —  that  is,  maybe  I  have,  I  guess  —  but 
I'll  —  I'll  be  all  right  in  a  little,"  Paula  said,  fingering 
her  dress  mechanically;  "it's  only  being  tired  that 
makes  me  look  this  way  - 

"Travelling  around  so  much  is  really  hard  work," 
suggested  Lome,  sympathetically. 

"Yes,  that's  it.  I  hate  to  look  ugly,  though. 
Do  you  think  I'm  getting  fat?"  She  turned  her 
eyes  to  Lorrie,  with  so  tragic  an  inquiry  that  the 
older  girl,  kind-hearted  as  she  was,  could  hardly  keep 
back  her  laugh ;  fat  was  the  utter  abhorrence,  the 


164  VAN   CLEVE: 

abominable  thing,  the  secret  enemy  and  terror  of  the 
Jamesons,  mother  and  daughter. 

"Why,  no,  Paula,  you're  not  a  bit  fatter,"  Lorrie 
made  haste  to  assure  her ;  "that  is,  just  a  little,  maybe ; 
you're  always  nice  and  round  and  no  bones  showing, 
you  know.  But  I  think  you're  thinner  in  the  face,  if 
anything."  In  fact,  Paula's  small,  regular  features 
did  looked  rather  pinched,  and  she  was  unnaturally 
sallow. 

"I'm  tired,"  she  repeated,  prodding  at  a  crack  in 
the  porch  floor  with  the  ferule  of  her  expensive  lingerie 
parasol.  "I  didn't  want  to  come  back  to  this  old 
town,  anyhow,"  said  Paula,  jabbing  at  the  floor  petu 
lantly.  She  raised  her  head  with  an  abrupt  motion ;  her 
face  suddenly  flushed,  all  but  her  tightly  drawn  lips,  which 
kept  an  unwholesome  lead  color.  For  the  instant  she 
was  almost  homely;  it  was  startling.  "Lorrie,"  she 
said,  in  a  high,  accusing  tone.  "I  never  knew  you  were 
engaged.  I  never  knew  until  I  got  a  copy  of  our  paper 
and  saw  it  in  the  Jottings,  when  we  were  in  Atlantic 
City ;  I  never  knew.  When  did  it  happen  ?  It  didn't 
say  when  it  happened.  Did  it  happen  before  I  went 
away  ?"  She  leaned  forward ;  her  eyes  and  whole  face 
burned. 

"Why  —  why  —  I  —  I  don't  know-  '  stammered 
Lorrie,  taken  aback  at  the  other's  fevered  interest. 
"I  don't  remember  whether  you  were  still  at  home 
or  not." 

"Well,  anyhow,  you  know  when  it  happened,  I 
should  hope.  You  know  when  he  asked  you,"  said 
Paula,  with  a  violent  impatience.  Lorrie  and  her 
mother  felt  the  same  inward  recoil ;  for  the  first  time 
Paula  seemed  to  them  actually  coarse.  Her  shrill 
voice  was  coarse ;  her  eager,  persistent  curiosity  was 
coarse.  "When  was  it?"  she  reiterated  imperatively. 

"In  —  in  the  winter  —  it  was  some  time  in  the  win 
ter,"  said  Lorrie,  at  last,  with  difficulty. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  165 

"Oh!"  Paula  relapsed  into  the  chair  with  a  move 
ment  of  her  shoulder  indicating  open  disbelief.  "I 
don't  see  why  you  don't  want  to  talk  about  it."  And 
after  a  second  of  angry  silence,  she  burst  out,  vehemently 
reproachful:  "Why  didn't  you  tell  me,  Lorrie?  You 
knew  you  were  going  to  be  engaged  to  him.  You 
knew  you  were  going  to  say  yes  the  minute  he  asked  you. 
You  knew  he'd  ask  you ;  you  had  it  all  fixed  up,  you 
know  you  did.  Why  didn't  you  tell  me  ?  I  think 
you're  mean  —  you  —  you  —  it  wasn't  fair.  You  ought 
to  have  told  me  at  the  very  first.  I  think  you're  a 
mean  old  thing,  Lorrie  Gilbert  —  !"  She  choked  off, 
her  lips  working,  her  eyes  fastened  on  Lorrie  with  an 
unimaginable  fierceness.  It  was  plain  to  the  other 
two  women  that  Paula  had  brooded  herself  into  a  fury 
over  this  silly  grievance,  like  the  spoiled  child  she  was ; 
she  might  have  been  funny,  but  for  the  fact  that  there 
is  always  something  a  little  dreadful  about  the  anger 
of  a  fool. 

"I  didn't  think  you'd  care  so  much,  Paula,"  Lorrie 
said,  kindly  setting  herself  to  appease  the  girl;  "and 
besides,  I  didn't  tell  anybody  particularly,  you  know. 
It  was  announced  so  that  everybody  would  know  all 
at  once  — 

"Is  that  your  ring?  Did  he  give  you  that  ?"  Paula 
interrupted  hoarsely,  thrusting  her  hand  out  suddenly 
and  seizing  the  other's. 

"  Yes." 

Paula  examined  it  closely  for  a  minute.  "I  guess 
it's  a  real  diamond,"  she  said  at  length,  dropping  the 
hand  as  unexpectedly  as  she  had  snatched  it.  All  at 
once,  she  seemed  to  have  forgot  her  complaint ;  indeed, 
she  was  by  nature  too  amiable  or  too  indolent  to  keep 
herself  in  such  a  state  of  ferment  for  any  length  of  time. 
"Has  everybody  gone  away?"  she  asked.  "To  that 
old  war,  I  mean?  Your  brother  went,  didn't  he?" 

"Yes.     Bob's  at  Key  West,  now,"   said  Lorrie  in 


166  VAN   CLEVE: 

the  vigorously  cheerful  style  she  always  adopted  in  her 
mother's  presence. 

"I  heard  Mr.  Cortwright  went,  too/'  said  Paula, 
working  the  parasol  tip  around  and  around  in  a  knot 
hole,  intently. 

"Yes.  Campaigning  seems  to  suit  him.  He's  been 
very  well,  and  enjoying  himself!"  Lome's  mother 
answered  this  time ;  and  now  it  was  her  turn  to  assume 
the  artificial  confidence  !  Neither  of  them  was  in  the 
least  deceived  by  it ;  but  if  mothers  and  daughters 
should  cease  to  practise  these  gallant  and  tender  hypoc 
risies,  what  would  be  the  use  of  mothers  and  daughters, 
or  of  women  at  all  ? 

"Do  you  know  where  he  is,  all  the  time?"  Paula 
asked,  worrying  the  knot  hole. 

"Why,  of  course.  He's  at  Tampa  with  the  troops, 
unless  they've  been  moved  —  and  nobody  knows  what 
they  are  going  to  do  from  one  hour  to  the  next :  but 
that  was  the  last  we  heard." 

"He  —  he  writes  to  you,  I  suppose  ?" 

"To  me?"  said  Mrs.  Gilbert,  with  a  little  indulgent 
smile;  "I'm  afraid,  my  dear  child,  I'm  very  much 
afraid  he's  never  given  me  a  thought !  But  Lorrie  has 
been  getting  a  letter  every  day,  strange  to  say  !"  She 
gave  her  daughter  a  look  full  of  affectionate  mischief 
and  fun.  Lorrie  colored  faintly;  she  wished  Phil 
would  write  every  day. 

"Are  you  sure  all  your  letters  get  to  him?  How  do 
you  address  them?"  Paula  said  next. 

"Why,  to  his  regiment,  you  know." 

"Well,  I  —  I  supposed  so;  I  wasn't  sure,"  Paula 
said.  She  abandoned  the  porch  floor,  laid  the  parasol 
across  her  lap,  and  began  an  equally  automatic  and 
earnest  fidgeting  with  the  bit  of  pompadour  ribbon 
elaborately  knotted  on  its  handle. 

"Are  you  still  getting  ready  to  be  married,  Lorrie? 
Mr.  Cortwright  might  get  shot  in  a  fight,  you  know," 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  167 

she  said  shrilly  and  distinctly;  and  looked  up  as  the 
other  winced  and  paled  with  an  extraordinary  watch 
ful  curiosity.  About  the  speech  and  manner  there  was 
that  childish  brutality  not  unnatural  to  Paula;  it 
repelled,  partly  because  one  felt  the  hopelessness  of 
trying  to  illuminate  her.  A  child  might  mature,  might 
learn,  but  this  girl,  never  !  There  went  through  Mrs. 
Gilbert's  mind,  even  in  the  midst  of  her  distress  and 
indignation,  a  weird  fancy  presenting  Paula  as  one  of 
the  Psyches,  the  Undines,  the  lovely  creatures  without 
a  soul  that  figure  in  countless  old-world  legends.  "  She's 
hardly  responsible  !"  thought  the  mother,  with  a  kind 
of  impatient  pity. 

"Well,  I  — I  try  not  to  think  about  that,"  Lorrie 
said  with  an  effort. 

"I  don't  see  how  you  can  help  thinking  about  it — 
I'm  sure  I  would.  I  wouldn't  know  whether  to  go  on 
with  my  clothes  or  not,"  said  the  other.  She  eyed 
Lorrie  with  a  return  of  her  morbid  interest.  "  Don't 
it  make  you  feel  awfully  when  you  think  of  the  times 
he's  kissed  you  ?  He  did  kiss  you,  didn't  he  ?  " 

Lorrie  sat,  turning  white  and  red,  incapable  of  a  word  ; 
and  it  was  Mrs.  Gilbert  who  answered  in  a  cold  voice, 
stiffening  to  her  very  marrow:  " Please  don't,  Paula! 
It's  not  necessary  to  talk  about  —  about  things  like 
that." 

"I  suppose  not.  It's  no  use,  anyhow,"  Paula  as 
sented  dully.  There  was  another  silence.  "I  wish 
we  hadn't  come  back  !"  she  burst  out  again.  "I  wish 
we'd  stayed  in  Florida.  Then  we'd  have  been  right 
near  it  —  the  War,  you  know  —  we'd  have  seen  them 
all  —  all  the  soldiers  and  everything  —  we'd  have  seen 
'  her  face  puckered  together,  she  put  up  her  hands 
with  a  frantic  movement ;  the  parasol  slid  down  un 
heeded.  Paula  began  to  rock  herself  back  and  forth, 
and  the  other  two  women  saw  to  their  fright  and 
pain  that  her  slender  shoulders  were  heaving  vio- 


168  VAN   CLEVE: 

lently;  it  was  like  seeing  a  bruised  humming-bird  in 
torments. 

"  Mercy  !  Why,  Paula  —  why,  what  is  the  matter  ? 
Don't  you  feel  well  ?  Are  you  sick  ?  What  is  it  that 
hurts  you  ?  Tell  me  where  it  hurts  !  Don't  cry  that 
way!"  cried  out  Mrs.  Gilbert,  all  her  anger  dissolved 
in  kindness ;  she  ran  to  the  girl  with  little  soft,  purring 
ejaculations,  and  took  the  pretty,  trivial,  bedizened 
figure  into  her  maternal  arms.  "  There  now,  there  now  ! 
Tell  me  what's  the  matter  !" 

"Oh,  I'm  tired  —  I'm  sick  —  oh,  I  wish  we'd  never 
come  back!"  sobbed  Paula,  wildly.  Lorrie  and  her 
mother  exchanged  a  glance  above  the  flowered  hat. 
For  goodness'  sake  !  Crying  and  broken-hearted  this 
way  because  she  hadn't  seen  the  army  !  both  thought. 
But  after  all,  that  was  just  like  poor  Paula.  They 
tried  to  comfort  her  with  much  the  same  means  they 
might  have  employed  had  she  been  eight  years  old  ; 
and  Paula  sobbed  on  with  long,  shuddering  gasps  and 
moans  like  a  child,  sitting  rigid  between  them,  not 
yielding  to  their  caresses. 

"I'll  go  back  with  you  —  you're  not  well  enough  to 
go  by  yourself  that  long,  hot  walk.  I'll  just  go  along 
with  you,"  Lorrie  assured  her,  when  they  had  got  her 
somewhat  quieted  at  last ;  they  rescued  the  parasol, 
and  straightened  Paula's  frills,  and  dabbed  her  face 
and  eyes  with  soothing  cold  water,  and  fetched  the 
talcum  powder  and  the  smelling-salts,  and,  in  short, 
performed  all  the  hundred  and  one  small  offices  women 
find  necessary  to  such  an  occasion.  "Maybe  it  would 
be  better  if  you  lay  down  a  little  while  —  don't  you 
think?"  they  suggested  kindly. 

"I  c-can't  lie  down  in  this  d-dress,"  said  Paula, 
pitifully;  "it  would  spoil  it.  No,  you  don't  need  to 
come,  Lorrie.  You  don't  need  to  come  with  me.  I 
can  go  by  myself.  I  don't  want  you  to  come  I"  She 
spoke  with  hysterical  entreaty,  looking  at  the  other 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  169 

with  something  like  fear,  almost  as  strong  as  aversion 
in  her  blue  eyes  that  were  ordinarily  blank  and  beauti 
ful  as  a  mountain  lake. 

"Oh,  now,  don't  be  a  goose  !"  said  Lorrie  in  good- 
natured  and  sensible  command.  uWe  can't  let  you 
go  off  feeling  this  way.  It's  no  trouble  ;  I  haven't  got 
a  thing  to  do.  S-sh,  now  !  Don't  say  another  word. 
I'm  going!" 

Paula  submitted  as  unexpectedly  as  she  had  rebelled, 
and  dragged  feebly  down  the  steps,  her  arm  interlocked 
with  Lome's,  who  walked  beside,  hatless  in  the  uncon 
ventional  summer  style  of  our  suburbs,  erect  and  firm, 
with  all  her  chestnut-colored  hair  ruffling  and  shining 
in  the  sun.  Lorrie  was  not  a  tall  woman  nor  of  strong 
build,  yet  in  contrast  to  her  companion  she  produced 
a  surprising  effect  of  superiority;  perhaps  it  was  not 
wholly  physical ;  one  might  have  fancied  that  a  greater 
dignity  of  spirit  in  her  had  magically  become  visible. 
Mrs.  Gilbert  herself,  looking  after  them,  wondered 
aloud.  "Why,  I  didn't  realize  Lorrie  was  so  —  so  — 
she  mused,  and  turned  and  went  back  into  the  house 
without  being  able  to  find  the  proper  adjective. 

The  two  girls  went  on  slowly  and  silently,  the  elder 
in  a  good  deal  of  private  anxiety,  as  she  noted  her 
charge's  color  wane,  and  her  hollow  eyes,  and  the  un 
wholesome  moisture  clinging  around  her  taut  lips. 
In  fact,  Paula's  strength  barely  held  out  for  the  journey, 
and  it  was  with  unmeasured  relief  that  Lorrie  at  length 
beheld  the  sprawling,  decorated  fagade  of  the  hotel 
looming  ahead  of  them.  She  got  the  other  up  the 
steps,  helped  by  a  porter  who  chanced  to  be  passing, 
and  grasped  the  situation  ;  all  the  bell-boys  stared  with 
wondering  looks,  alert ;  and  an  expensively  dressed 
woman  with  gray  hair  strolling  along  the  corridor  gave 
the  couple  a  leisurely  survey,  and,  after  they  had  gone 
by,  turned  and  looked  after  them  with  shrewd  and 
sinister  curiosity.  Mrs.  Jameson,  rather  cross  at  being 


170  VAN   CLEVE: 

roused  from  her  regular  morning  nap,  which  formed  a 
part  of  the  exercises  in  physical  preservation  and  im 
provement  about  which  she  was  always  most  systematic, 
came  to  the  door  of  their  room,  in  a  flowing  white 
neglige,  embroidered  with  garlands  of  lilac,  wisteria,  and 
what-not  by  some  Gallic  artist  of  the  needle,  with 
lilac-hued  ribbons  floating  and  intermingling  with  its 
flounces.  Rich  odors  accompanied  the  lady ;  indeed, 
they  gushed  out  of  the  darkened  bedroom  (which  was 
littered  with  other  ribbons,  and  wilted  flowers,  and 
wrapping-papers,  and  odd  slippers,  and  a  bath  towel  or 
two,  and  a  pair  of  pink  brocade  corsets  draped  over  the 
back  of  a  chair)  in  a  volume  Lorrie  found  almost  suffo 
cating  ;  and  Paula,  who  nevertheless  must  have  been  ac 
customed  to  this  atmosphere,  reeled  against  her  com 
panion. 

"Well,  I  must  say,  Paula-  her  mother  began, 
sharply;  she  checked  herself  at  sight  of  the  visitor. 
"Oh,  Miss  Gilbert!  Do  excuse  my  hair,  please.  I 
always  put  it  up  on  kid  curlers  this  way,  you  know.  I 
don't  approve  of  curling-irons,  they're  so  bad  for  the 
hair—" 

"Let  me  get  Paula  to  the  lounge,  please,  Mrs.  Jame 
son;  she's  not  feeling  very  well,"  Lorrie  interrupted  her 
ruthlessly ;  she  had  to  push  the  surprised  woman  aside 
to  enter. 

"I'd  like  a  drink  of  water,"  said  Paula  in  a  vague, 
distant  whisper. 

Mrs.  Jameson  stood  stupefied  and  entirely  useless  as 
Lorrie  briskly  and  largely  by  main  strength  got  her 
daughter  to  the  sofa,  opened  her  dress,  threw  up  the 
window,  ran  and  came  back  with  a  tumbler  of  ice  water 
and  a  fan  —  all  in  five  seconds  and  with  an  ease,  noise- 
lessness,  and  certainty  of  movement  such  as  Mrs.  Jame 
son  had  never  witnessed  in  her  life.  "Why,  why  — 
what  is  it?  What's  the  matter  with  Paula?"  she  re 
peated  two  or  three  times,  trailing  ineffectually  up  and 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  171 

down    in    Lome's  wake.     She  stopped    by    the  sofa. 
" Are  you  sick,  Paula?" 

"I'm  afraid  it's  this  heat,"  said  Lorrie,  kneeling  and 
fanning  swiftly.  "Just  sip  the  water,  Paula,  just  a 
little  at  a  time.  That's  right  —  yes,  you  can  swallow 
it  —  see  !  —  that's  right.  It's  better  for  you  a  little 
at  a  time.  Now  lie  down  flat.  No,  let  me  take  away 
the  cushion,  Mrs.  Jameson ;  she'll  feel  better  with  her 
head  low." 

"Is  it  the  heat,  Paula  ?"  asked  her  mother,  helplessly. 
"Do  you  think  it's  the  heat  ?  I  don't  know  what  to  do 
for  a  heat-stroke.  What's  best,  Miss  Gilbert?" 

"I  think  she'd  better  have  a  doctor,"  said  Lorrie; 
"there's  one  in  the  hotel,  isn't  there ?  I'll  get  him  — " 
She  was  on  her  feet  with  the  words. 

"No,  no,  I  don't  want  him,  I  don't  want  any  doctor  !" 
said  Paula,  faintly,  struggling  upright  with  wild  eyes. 
She  clutched  desperately  at  Lome's  skirts.  "I  won't 
have  the  doctor,  Lorrie ;  I  won't,  I  won't!"  She  began 
a  kind  of  weak  screaming. 

"He's  old  school  —  the  one  in  the  hotel  is  —  and 
we've  always  been  homeopathic  —  the  medicine  is 
so  much  easier  to  take-  "  Mrs.  Jameson  explained 
feebly.  Lorrie  looked  at  her,  at  the  sick  girl  crying 
and  writhing  on  the  sofa,  at  the  hot,  untidy,  perfumed 
room,  with  a  sudden  overmastering  repugnance;  the 
next  instant  she  chided  herself  sternly  for  it. 

"I'll  get  any  other  doctor  you  want,  Mrs.  Jameson," 
she  compelled  herself  to  say  with  gentleness;  "Paula 
must  have  somebody  —  you  can  see  that  for  yourself." 

"Well,  Doctor  Booth-  '  Mrs.  Jameson  said,  hesi 
tating  ;  she  was  interrupted  by  Paula's  high-pitched 
wailing. 

"No,  don't  — oh,  don't  —  oh,  please  don't!"  She 
beat  the  ah-  with  her  hands.  "I'll  tell  —  I'll  tell  —  oh, 
please  — !" 

Lorrie  sped  down  the  hall,  —  the  hysterical  screeches 


172  VAN  CLEVE: 

sinking  to  hysterical  chokings  and  mutterings  within 
the  room  behind  her.  She  planned  quickly.  Doctor 
Booth's  office,  fortunately,  was  only  about  half  a  dozen 
squares  away ;  he  could  reach  the  hotel  in  a  few  min 
utes  ;  but  if  he  was  not  in,  she  would  call  up  the  next 
nearest  —  who  would  that  be  ?  —  Doctor  Livingston  - 
he  was  "old  school,"  but  pooh!  what  difference  did 
that  make  ?  It  was  getting  on  towards  noon,  not  a 
very  good  hour  to  go  in  search  of  doctors.  She  debated 
whether  she  had  not  better  take  it  on  herself  to  tele 
phone  for  a  trained  nurse,  too,  since  it  was  plain  that 
foolish,  scared  woman  in  the  lavender  embroideries 
would  be  absolutely  of  no  account  in  a  sick-room,  and 
Paula  might  be  going  to  be  seriously  ill  for  some  time. 
Lorrie  associated  Florida  with  malarial  germs,  and  New 
York  and  Atlantic  City  with  incautious  eating  and 
drinking ;  poor  water  —  typhoid  —  over-fatigue  —  all 
the  alarmist  reports  of  the  day  crowded  into  her  mind. 
And  then  the  sound  of  her  own  name,  distractedly  called, 
arrested  her  with  her  finger  on  the  button  to  summon  the 
elevator.  ' '  Miss  Gilbert !  Miss  Gilbert ! ' ' 

Mrs.  Jameson  rushed  up,  gasping ;  her  face  was  ash 
color  —  the  fine  lines  and  crows'  feet  in  it  showed  merci 
lessly  ;  but  she  had  forgot  all  about  them,  she  forgot 
her  kid  curlers  and  her  negligee,  even  with  the  elevator 
man  imminent  in  his  cab.  She  ran  and  grasped  the 
front  of  Lome's  white  shirtwaist  with  trembling  hands, 
on  which  all  sorts  of  rings  and  jewels  glittered  keenly. 
"  Don't  get  the  doctor  !"  she  managed  to  get  out  in  a 
strangled  whisper.  "For  God's  sake,  don't !  That  is, 
—  if  you  could  get  one  —  no,  no,  don't !"  She  paused 
breathlessly,  in  a  tortured  indecision,  terrible  to  see  on 
her  doll-featured  face.  Lorrie  stood,  sorely  perplexed, 
genuinely  alarmed. 

"But,  Mrs.  Jameson  —  !"  she  began  to  protest. 

"Is  there  a  doctor  here  that  nobody  knows  —  that 
nobody  ever  has  —  that  isn't  anybody's  doctor  ?"  de- 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  173 

manded  the  older  woman,  holding  her  fiercely.     "If 
you  did  know  of  one  - 

"Why,    no  —  how    could     I  —  why,    what    for - 
why  -    "  Lorrie  was  utterly  bewildered. 

"No,  no,  don't  call  anybody,  then  !"  reiterated  Mrs. 
Jameson,  releasing  her.  "I  don't  want  anybody,  do 
you  hear?  I  won't  have  anybody.  I'm  her  mother, 
and  I  don't  want  any  doctor  for  her,  and  it's  none  of 
your  business,  do  you  hear  me?"  she  said  with  stifled 
violence.  She  thrust  her  face  almost  into  Lome's. 
"Don't  you  dare  —  !"  All  at  once  she  became  a  bel 
dame,  a  vulgar  fury,  a  dishevelled  hag  before  whom  the 
young  woman  shrank  in  some  feeling  not  far  from 
terror. 

Lorrie  went  home,  a  little  shaken  by  the  morning's 
experiences ;  very  likely  she  was  already  somewhat 
overstrained  by  these  recent  trying  weeks.  "Mother," 
she  said  gravely,  as  the  two  ladies  sat  down  to  their 
luncheon ;  "I'm  afraid  I've  been  doing  that  poor  Mrs. 
Jameson  an  awful  injustice  all  this  while.  She  is  very 
much  fonder  of  Paula  than  I  thought  —  just  as  fond  as 
other  mothers  are  of  their  children  —  just  like  you ! 
Of  course  she  didn't  act  the  way  you  would  if  I  were 
suddenly  taken  sick,  but  she's  just  as  frightened  and 
anxious.  Why,  do  you  know,  when  she  finally  did 
realize  that  Paula  was  sick,  she  —  why,  she  was  just 
like  a  crazy  woman  !" 


CHAPTER  XII 

IN   WHICH   WE    PACK   OUR   VALISES 

DURING  all  this  time,  the  unimpressionable  Mr. 
Kendrick  worked  along,  according  to  his  habit,  as  has 
been  recited,  paying  only  a  passing  attention  to  the 
history-making  in  progress  around  him.  Van  himself 
was  making,  not  history,  but  what  was  much  better 
worth  while,  from  his  point  of  view,  Money  —  yes, 
Money  with  a  capital  letter.  Old  Joshua  Van  Cleve, 
who,  if  popular  sayings  can  be  listened  to,  must  have 
had  occasion  to  turn  over  more  than  once  in  the  quar 
ter  century  or  so  since  he  went  to  his  last  grim  bed,  at 
witnessing  the  loose-handed  administration  of  his 
worldly  goods  —  Joshua,  I  say,  might  at  last  rest  in 
peace ;  his  grandson  was  a  chip  of  his  own  solid  and  well- 
hewn  block  !  The  rest  of  us,  for  that  matter,  could  also 
behold  the  fine  moral  spectacle  of  Virtue  getting  its  due 
handsomely,  constantly  offered  to  us  in  romance  and 
melodrama,  but  seldom,  alas,  upon  this  real  and  mun 
dane  stage.  If  ever  a  man  deserved  to  succeed,  it  was 
Van  Cleve ;  and  he  did  succeed.  The  Good  Apprentice 
prospered,  for  once,  as  all  Good  Apprentices  should. 
He  was  shrewd,  he  was  cool,  he  was  just,  he  wasun- 
fathomably  patient;  and  without  question  his  whole 
heart  was  in  the  work.  Mr.  Kendrick  had  nowhere  else 
to  bestow  it ;  so  that  steady  and  reliable  organ  beat, 
presumably,  only  for  himself. 

It  is  true  he  was  very  good  to  his  family,  indulging 
their  whims  as  far  as  he  was  able,  supplying  their  wants 
with  the  utmost  liberality,  and  rarely  inquiring  how  they 

174 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  175 

disposed  of  the  funds  which  he  poured  into  that  ap 
parently  bottomless  hopper.  "  They  're  mighty  good 
women — all  of  'em,  even  Uncle  Stan ;  he's  about  the  same 
as  a  woman,"  Van  used  to  reflect  humorously;  "good 
and  kind,  and  I  guess  they've  got  as  much  sense  as  most 
women  that  aren't  nearly  so  nice,  either,  by  jiminy  !" 
saying  which  he  would  methodically  file  away  their 
letters  asking  for  money,  or  acknowledging  the  receipt 
of  it,  in  the  drawer  he  used  for  that  purpose.  In  time 
there  got  to  be  a  stack  of  these  documents.  .  .  .  "  Dear 
est  Van :  Your  noble,  generous,  splendid  check  came 
this  morning.  You  dear  old  fellow,  I'm  so  afraid  you 
went  without  something  yourself,  to  provide  us.  What 
would  we  not  all  give  to  take  this  burden  off  of  you  ! 
But  never  mind,  Van  darling,  some  day  it  will  all  be 
made  up  to  you,  that  is  my  devout  belief."  "My  dear, 
fine  boy  :  We  cannot  bear  to  say  anything  to  you  about 
money  after  all  your  superb  generosity  to  us,  but  when 
I  have  laid  the  facts  before  you,  I  think  you  will  see 
this  is  an  imperative  emergency.  Since  I  had  grippe  last 
winter,  the  doctor  has  constantly  urged  our  getting  out 
of  New  York,  and  now  he  enthusiastically  indorses  our 
Tarry  town  plan.  Of  course,  it  will  be  a  little  extra  ex 
pense  to  move  there,  but  once  there,  the  cost  of  living  is 
much  less,  and  the  air  will  be  beneficial  to  us  all.  .  .  .  ; 
etc.,  etc.  Van  Cleve  used  to  skim  through  this  part 
with  a  highly  irreverent  inattention ;  he  knew  from 
experience  that  towards  page  three  the  ladies  would 
finally  come  to  the  point,  "get  down  to  business"; 
that  is,  divulge  the  amount  they  wanted.  The  young 
fellow  acquitted  them  of  anything  like  conscious 
hypocrisy ;  there  was  nothing  mean  nor  shabby  about 
them;  they  were  honestly  fond  and  proud  of  him,  he 
knew,  honestly  sorry  that  they  must  be  dependent  on 
him.  He  supposed  all  women  (except  one,  perhaps) 
to  be  the  same.  And  anyhow,  were  they  not  his  kin  ? 
They  belonged  to  him ;  and  he  wouldn't  give  a  Some- 


176  VAN   CLEVE: 

thing  for  a  man  who  couldn't  take  care  of  his  women, 
and  give  them  what  they  wanted  !  He  had  all  their 
letters  tied  up  in  packets,  year  by  year,  and  labelled 
in  his  neat,  square  handwriting:  "M.  V.  C.  Lucas 
5/19/'98,  $75.  Answd.  5/28/'98."  "E.  Lucas  7/15/ 
'02,  $50"  and  so  on.  ''Don't  they  ever  write  to  you 
about  anything  but  money?"  was  once  asked  of  him. 
"Oh,  yes.  But  that's  the  only  important  thing." 

Being  now  a  bachelor  at  large  upon  the  world,  the 
young  gentleman  sometimes  forsook  his  boarding- 
house  of  an  evening  and  made  a  call,  or  recreated  him 
self  at  the  theatre  or  at  the  club  which  he  had  recently 
found  he  was  able  to  join ;  indeed,  this  last  was  probably 
his  most  favored  resort,  for,  except  with  other  men, 
Van  had  no  great  social  gift.  The  girls,  in  general, 
were  glad  enough  to  see  him,  even  when  he  forgot  that 
he  had  come  to  visit  them,  and  got  to  talking  politics 
or  the  stock  market  with  their  fathers  !  Almost  any 
sensible  girl  would  have  been  ready  to  like  Van  Cleve, 
would  have  appreciated  his  plain  good  qualities,  and 
have  shown  him  a  not  discouraging  face;  but  unluck 
ily  the  young  man  had  no  idea  of  this  amiable  disposi 
tion  on  their  part.  I  fear  Mr.  Kendrick  was  not  at  all  a 
ladies'  man.  They  appeared  to  him  mostly  as  pretty, 
decorative  creatures,  sharing  doubtless  the  funny  and 
occasionally  irritating  forcible-feeblenesses  of  his  own 
womenkind.  It  was  a  matter  of  increasing  wonder  to 
him  that  any  man  should  voluntarily  elect  to  spend  his 
life  with  one  of  them.  "Well,  it  wouldn't  be  all  roses 
for  any  girl  that  had  to  live  with  me  /"  he  sometimes 
retorted  upon  himself,  satirically  honest.  Van  never 
admitted  even  in  this  privacy  that  there  was  always  an 
exception  lurking  in  the  back  of  his  mind.  There  was 
one  girl  —  heigh-ho  !  He  believed  he  could  have  lived 
with  her  and  made  her  happy. 

It  was  to  her  house  that  he  went  in  the  hot  summer 
night  of  the  day  of  Paula's  ill-starred  visit  there.  Van 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  177 

Cleve,  too,  had  had  a  letter  from  Bob ;  and  found  no 
difficulty  in  persuading  himself  that  it  would  be  a  kind 
ness  to  take  it  over  for  the  family  to  read.  Of  course, 
Lorrie  didn't  care  particularly  about  seeing  him  - 
he  knew  that;  and  news  from  the  man  she  was  engaged 
to  was  all  that  really  interested  her,  nevertheless  — . 
So  Mr.  Kendrick  left  his  fellow-boarders  on  the  porch, 
with  their  rocking-chairs  and  their  fans,  and  journeyed 
over  to  Warwick  Lane  in  the  face  of  an  ominous  cloud- 
bank  all  along  the  western  horizon,  intermittently 
streaked  and  splashed  with  lightning.  Lorrie  was 
sitting,  as  usual,  on  the  Gilbert  front  steps,  alone  in  the 
sultry  dusk ;  all  the  front  steps  up  and  down  the  little 
suburban  street  were  thus  decorated  at  this  hour,  and 
you  might  hear  the  young  people's  laughter,  and  a 
banjo  twanging  here  and  there;  everybody  hadn't 
gone  to  the  War.  As  he  came  up  the  walk,  Van, 
through  a  lamplit  square  of  window,  could  perceive  the 
Professor  bending  over  a  sheaf  of  writing  —  examina 
tion-papers,  very  likely  —  and  Mrs.  Gilbert  darning  a 
stocking  on  the  other  side  of  the  table ;  the  two  tired 
gray  heads  showed  distinctly. 

The  family  had  also  heard  from  Robert,  Van  Cleve 
learned,  and  his  own  news  was  of  no  later  date.  He 
and  Lorrie  agreed  that  the  trip  seemed  to  be  doing  Bob 
good,  and  he  was  getting  a  lot  of  fun  out  of  it,  anyhow ; 
his  letters  were  so  happy.  "I  don't  believe  it's  the  - 
the  sort  of  fun  that  will  harm  him,  either,  do  you,  Van  ?  " 
the  girl  asked  earnestly.  "Of  course  there're  all  kinds 
of  men  in  an  army  —  a  camp  like  that,  but  they  must 
be  mostly  all  right,  or  they  couldn't  stay  in  the  army." 

"They're  under  pretty  strict  discipline  —  the  regu 
lars,  that  is,  I  believe,"  said  Van  Cleve,  trying  to  be 
diplomatic.  "Anyhow,  it  suits  Bob  better  than  any 
thing  he  has  ever  tried.  He  was  crazy  to  go,  and  it 
wouldn't  have  done  any  good  to  have  kept  him  at  home." 
During  and  since  the  excitement,  Lorrie  and  Van  had 


178  VAN   CLEVE: 

tacitly  agreed  to  forget  their  differences  over  Bob  — 
to  bury  the  hatchet.  The  old  friendly  confidence  was 
restored ;  and  if  another  person's  name  would  be  for 
ever  cropping  up,  Van  Cleve  realized  with  a  twinge  that 
this  was  natural  and  inevitable.  Her  lover  was  con 
stantly  in  Lome's  mind,  and  it  was  right  and  proper  that 
he  should  be;  then  how  could  she  help  talking  about 
him? 

"  That's  what  I  tell  Mother,  but  she  can't  help  worry 
ing,  you  know,"  said  Lorrie,  answering  his  last  speech ; 
"I  wish  Bob  could  be  more  with  —  with  Mr.  Cort- 
wright,  but  they  don't  seem  to  have  seen  much  of  each 
other.  The  camp's  perfectly  huge,  they  say,  swarming 
with  men.  And  then  Philip  —  Mr.  Cortwright  —  must 
be  on  duty  a  great  part  of  his  time/'  the  girl  added,  with 
a  note  of  pride;  "he  said  in  one  of  his  letters  he  wouldn't 
have  much  chance  to  look  after  Bob." 

Van  Cleve,  who  still  kept  to  his  ideas  —  doubtless 
unfair  and  prejudiced  ones  —  about  the  benefit  Robert 
might  receive  from  an  association  with  this  gentleman, 
did  not  reply  for  a  moment.  Then  he  spoke,  overlook 
ing  Mr.  Cortwright.  "I  suppose  if  we  could  be  there  at 
Tampa  or  Key  West  and  see  it,  we'd  laugh  at  the 
notion  of  finding  or  looking  out  for  anybody.  It  must 
be  an  awful  mix-up,"  he  said  wisely. 

There  was  a  pause  while  the  thunder  began  to  rumble 
overhead. 

"Do  you  suppose  cannon  sounds  like  that?"  Lorrie 
said. 

"Don't  know.  I've  a  notion  it's  shorter  and  boomier, 
somehow  —  not  quite  so  much  like  a  lot  of  empty 
hogsheads  rolling  downstairs,"  Van  suggested.  "Your 
mother  was  near  some  of  the  battle-fields  in  the  Civil 
War,  wasn't  she  ?  She  must  know  what  sort  of  noise 
the  guns  make." 

"Yes,  but  I  don't  like  to  ask  her.  I  think  it  pains 
her  to  be  reminded  of  it." 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  179 

They  glanced  at  the  open  window. 

"How  old  your  father  and  mother  are  beginning  to 
look,  Lome,"  Van  said  involuntarily;  the  knowledge 
came  to  him  with  an  unwelcome  shock. 

"Do  you  think  so?"  she  said,  troubled;  "they 
haven't  been  well,  either  of  them ;  and  Bob's  never  out 
of  their  minds  for  one  instant,  you  know.  It  does  seem 
as  if  we'd  had  so  many  upsetting  things  happen  lately ; 
and  when  people  get  older,  they  can't  stand  them  so  well. 
Now  to-day  Paula  Jameson  -  '  Lorrie  gave  him  some 
description  of  the  girl's  seizure.  "I  hope  it's  nothing 
serious,  but  it  certainly  was  enough  to  frighten  anybody 
to  see  it  —  it  was  so  sudden,"  she  concluded.  "Mother's 
been  what  she  calls  '  as  nervous  as  a  witch '  all  day.  I'm 
glad  she  didn't  have  to  have  anything  to  do  with  Mrs. 
Jameson,  anyhow  -  -  Van,  it  was  awful  !  That  poor 
thing  was  completely  frightened  out  of  what  little  sense 
she  has  —  is  that  somebody  coming  in  ?" 

The  visitor  was  Mrs.  Jameson,  walking  fast.  "Gra 
cious  !  Suppose  she  heard  me !  I  hope  I  wasn't 
speaking  very  loud  !"  Lorrie  ejaculated  inwardly,  panic- 
struck  ;  and  greeted  the  other  in  a  fluster  that  made 
Van  Cleve  smile  in  the  dark.  "Why  —  why  —  good 
evening,  Mrs.  Jameson.  A  —  er  —  how  is  Paula?" 
And  then,  as  the  girl's  mother  came  up  and  stood 
breathing  hurriedly  and  excitedly  without  a  word, 
Lorrie  added  in  quick  alarm ;  "she's  not  worse  ?  She's 
not  going  to  be  very  sick  ?  What  is  it  ?  A  —  a  fever  ? 
Not  a  fever,  I  hope?" 

Mrs.  Jameson  spoke  at  last  in  a  hasty,  fluttering  voice, 
catching  herself  and  swallowing  at  every  other  word. 
"No,  it's  not  that  —  she's  better  —  that  is,  she  —  she'll 
be  better  —  I  don't  know  —  who's  that?"  she  cried  out 
shrilly,  and  darted  a  step  forward,  peering  into  the 
shadow  where  Van  Cleve  sat.  "Is  that  your  brother? 
Is  that  you,  Bob  Gilbert  ?" 

"Why  no,  Bob's  not  home  —  he's  gone  away  —  he's 


180  VAN  CLEVE: 

with  the  troops  down  in  Florida  —  didn't  Paula  tell 
you?"  Lorrie  explained,  a  good  deal  startled,  as  Van 
Cleve  got  to  his  feet  and  came  into  the  light,  himself 
somewhat  surprised.  Mrs.  Jameson  fell  back  unstead 
ily  and  stared  at  him.  "It's  Mr.  Kendrick,  Van  Cleve 
Kendrick,  you  know.  Why,  I  was  sure  you  knew  Van 
Cleve,"  said  Lorrie.  "Paula  knows  him."  And  she 
asked  again,  unconvinced:  "Is  Paula  better?  Can't  I 
do  something  for  her?" 

"Oh,  I've  met  Miss  Jameson  lots  of  times — "  Van 
was  saying,  a  little  embarrassed. 

"Oh,  yes,  yes  —  I  —  I  beg  your  pardon,  Mr.  Ken 
drick,  of  course  —  I  couldn't  see  who  it  was  —  I  beg 
your  pardon  -  ''  Mrs.  Jameson  said  in  a  manner  that 
so  laboriously  parodied  her  accustomed  artificial  graces 
that  the  others  observed  it  with  a  kind  of  incredulity. 
She  put  up  a  hand  to  her  bare  throat,  as  if  to  help  the 
control  of  her  voice.  "I  —  I  thought  for  a  minute 
your  brother  might  have  come  back,  and  —  and  I 
wanted  to  see  him  on  business  —  a  —  a  little  business," 
she  said  to  Lorrie. 

"I'm  sorry  Bob's  not  home-  '  Lorrie  stammered, 
confounded  by  this  statement ;  "I  can  give  you  his 
last  address,  though,  but  we're  not  sure  where  he'll 
be  -  "  she  was  going  on  to  say,  when  Mrs.  Jameson  cut 
her  short  with  a  sudden  wild  ejaculation  and  gesture ; 
she  threw  out  both  hands  as  if  she  rent  and  tore  away 
some  bond,  resigned  some  struggle  with  a  need  stronger 
than  herself.  "It  don't  make  any  difference !"  she 
said  loud  and  harshly;  "where's  his  father?  I  want 
to  see  his  father.  Is  he  here  ?" 

' '  Father  f ' '  repeated  Lorrie,  blankly.  The  request  was 
stranger,  if  that  could  be,  than  the  first.  Professor 
Gilbert  had  never  met,  had  never  even  seen,  Mrs.  Jame 
son  in  his  life ;  it  was  impossible  to  imagine  their  having 
a  single  interest  in  common,  a  single  thought  or  feeling. 
"Father  f  Why  yes,  he's  here  —  he's  in  the  house.  Do 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  181 

you  want  —  I  mean,  shall  I  call  him  —  I  mean,  won't 
you  come  in?" 

11 1  want  to  see  your  father,"  said  Mrs.  Jameson  again, 
vehemently.  "Is  that  him  in  there?  That  gray- 
headed  man  ?"  She  advanced  into  the  full  light,  show 
ing  a  face  and  figure  in  uncanny  disorder ;  she  had  a 
black  lace  dress  and  black  hat  flung  on  anyhow;  tag- 
ends  of  lavender  ribbon  and  white  edging  stuck  out 
inappropriately  about  the  corsage;  the  plumes  of  her 
hat  swept  and  bobbed  and  dipped  over  her  big  white 
neck  and  shoulders  that  showed  fleshily  under  the  figured 
net  draperies ;  and  wisps  of  her  red  hair  blew  or  hung 
stringily  out  of  curl  about  her.  The  two  young  people 
looked  at  her  almost  appalled ;  for  terror  and  misery 
stared  out  of  the  woman's  eyes,  and  walked  in  this 
slattern  finery,  on  those  pinched,  French-heeled  slip 
pers.  "The  poor  thing  has  gone  out  of  her  head,  sure 
enough!  Paula  must  be  going  to  die  !"  both  of  them 
thought.  For  an  instant  they  stood  helpless,  not  know 
ing  what  to  do  or  say. 

"I  want  to  see  your  father,"  said  Mrs.  Jameson, 
moving  towards  the  door,  still  with  that  air  of  having 
thrown  down  all  barriers.  She  turned  quickly.  ' i  You  'd 
better  go  away ! "  she  said,  her  glance  comprehending 
them  both.  "Why  don't  you  go  away  ?  I  want  to  see 
him  by  himself." 

"But  Mrs.  Jameson,  father  can't  —  he  doesn't  - 
he  won't  know  who  you  are  —  just  wait  a  minute  — 
only    a    minute,    won't    you?"    Lorrie  expostulated, 
trying    to    gather    up    her    own  wits,   and  to    speak 
soothingly  and  with  composure;  "hadn't  you  better 
sit  down  here,  and  —  and  let  me  get  you  something  ? 
You  —  you're  nervous,  you  know.     Can't  you  tell  me 
what  it  is  ?    Is  it  something  about  Paula  ?    Tell  me, 
won't  you?" 

Mrs.  Jameson  shook  off  her  hands.  "  Let  me  alone  ! " 
she  said  savagely ;  and  thrust  them  both  aside  and  went 


182  VAN   CLEVE: 

into  the  house.  Lorrie  and  Van  Cleve  hesitated  behind 
her,  each  questioning  the  other's  face. 

"That's  just  the  way  she  was  to-day  when  she  found 
how  sick  poor  Paula  was  ! "  whispered  the  girl.  Uncon 
sciously  she  laid  a  hand  on  his  arm.  "  Mercy,  I'm  glad 
you're  here,  Van  !  What  do  you  suppose  is  the  matter  ? 
She  acts  as  if  she  might  do  anything !  And  yet  she 
said  something  about  Paula's  being  better  !" 

"Oh,  she's  just  frightened,  I  guess,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
reassuringly.  Mrs.  Jameson's  manner  reminded  him 
of  his  aunt's  when  that  lady  reached  a  high  pitch  of 
excitement.  "You'll  find  there's  nothing  much  wrong," 
said  the  young  man,  wagging  his  head  knowingly,  as 
he  followed  her.  The  storm  was  rising  noisily,  clapping 
the  doors,  and  sending  the  Professor's  papers  scurrying 
all  about  the  room.  There  came  a  dash  of  rain. 

"Lorrie!  Van!  Better  run  and  close  the  win 
dows!"  Mrs.  Gilbert  called  out.  She  dropped  her 
work  and  ran  to  the  door.  "Come  in,  children,  both  of 
you  !  Is  there  somebody  else  out  there  ?  I  thought  I 
heard  somebody  —  Mrs.  Jameson  !" 

The  other  shouldered  past  without  heeding  her. 
"Is  that  Bob  Gilbert's  father?  Are  you  his  father ?" 
she  demanded. 

Professor  Gilbert,  who  had  been  gathering  sheets  of 
foolscap  from  under  the  fender  where  they  had  blown 
and  lodged,  straightened  up,  smoothing  them  in  his 
hands,  and  turned  around.  He  pushed  up  his  glasses 
and  green  shade  to  survey  her  amazedly. 

"My  name  is  Gilbert,  madame,"  he  said,  recovering ; 
and  made  a  little  courteous,  old-fashioned  gesture  of 
apology.  "  Er  —  who  is  it,  if  you  please  ?  " 

"It's  Mrs.  Jameson,  Sam  —  you  know --Paula 
Jameson's  mother  —  you  know  Paula,"  Mrs.  Gilbert 
interposed  hastily.  "My  husband,  Professor  Gilbert, 
Mrs.  Jameson,"  she  added  conventionally,  notwithstand 
ing  her  surprise ;  she  supposed  that  the  other  had  run 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  183 

in  for  a  refuge  from  the  rain.  And  —  "  Won't  you  sit 
down?"  said  the  hospitable  little  lady,  seeking  to  put 
the  guest  at  her  ease.  Still  Mrs.  Jameson  did  not 
move  or  speak ;  and  in  the  silence,  Lome's  mother 
suddenly  sensed  impending  calamity.  "How  is  Paula  ? 
Is  she  —  ?  It's  not  serious?"  she  asked  quickly.  Her 
eyes  searched  the  other  mother's  face,  and  whatever  she 
divined  there,  stark  horror  all  at  once  laid  hold  of  her. 
"Merciful  Heaven,  isn't  she  going  to  —  to  get  well? 
She  —  she's  not  going  to  —  to  -  "  she  could  not  finish. 

Mrs.  Jameson  glanced  at  her  impatiently.  She 
made  a  movement  towards  the  Professor,  then  checked 
herself  as  it  seemed  unwillingly,  and  looked  around  on 
the  others.  "I  said  for  all  of  you  to  go  away.' '  Then, 
as  nobody  moved  immediately  in  the  common  bewil 
derment,  she  threw  out  both  hands  again  in  a  parox 
ysm  of  impotent  anger.  i  i  My  God,  won't  anybody  listen 
to  me?"  she  screamed  out  violently,  and  stamped  the 
floor;  "I  know  I'm  acting  queer  —  I  know  it  as  well 
as  you  do  !  But  I'm  not  crazy  —  not  yet,  anyhow  !" 
And  with  this  outburst  she  seemed  on  a  sudden  to  repos 
sess  herself !  It  was  as  if  some  unimaginable  flood  of 
desperate  emotion  had  deluged  and  devastated  her  soul 
and  rushed  on,  leaving  her  to  the  ultimate  calm  —  the 
calm  of  defeat.  She  went  up  to  Professor  Gilbert  and 
spoke  steadily.  "I  have  come  about  your  son.  I  mean 
the  one  that's  called  Bob.  I  want  you  to  send  for  him 
to  come  back.  He's  got  to  come  back  here." 

"Bob?  You  mean  Bob?"  said  the  father,  uncom- 
prehendingly ;  "you  want  him  to  come  back?  But 
madame,  I  -  -  I  don't  understand.  What  is  the  matter  ? 
Why  —  ?" 

"Because  he's  ruined  my  girl  —  that's  why!"  said 
Mrs.  Jameson ;  and  as  Professor  Gilbert  moved  with 
an  inarticulate  sound,  she  repeated  the  words. 

There  was  a  speechless  moment.  Outside  the  storm 
roared  past  and  shook  the  four  corners  of  the  house; 


184  VAN  CLEVE: 

but  for  the  people  in  the  Gilbert  sitting-room,  silence 
engulfed  the  universe.  Mrs.  Jameson  stood  haggardly 
in  the  midst  of  them,  her  hand  clutching  at  her  throat  ; 
she  was  spent  utterly  and  could  feel  and  think  no  further. 
For  that  matter,  thought  was  beyond  the  others,  too  ; 
nobody  was  thinking;  their  minds  stood  still,  clogged 
with  formless  protest.  Van  Cleve,  who  more  than  any 
one  present  had  the  habit  of  self-mastery,  was  the  first 
to  recognize  that  Mrs.  Jameson  was  not  insane ;  she 
was  most  tragically  sane,  and  she  believed  herself  to 
be  telling  the  truth.  It  might  be  monstrous  —  it 
was  monstrous  —  but  it  explained  and  justified  her. 
After  another  chaotic  instant,  Lorrie  came  to  the  same 
realization ;  strangely  enough,  her  first  coherent  thought 
in  that  flash  of  miserable  illumination  was  not  of  her 
brother,  not  of  Bob's  guilt  or  innocence,  but  of  Paula. 
Lorrie  understood  now ;  sick  horror  and  pity  surged 
over  her. 

Mrs.  Gilbert  spoke,  grasping  at  her  first  definite 
idea;  it  was  more  like  an  impulse  uttered  than  a 
thought.  "My  son  never  did  that  thing.  Our  Bob 
never  did  that/7  she  said. 

"  Will  you  send  for  him  ?"  said  the  other  mother. 

"Mrs.  Jameson,"  said  the  Professor,  collecting  him 
self;  "I  —  I  cannot  believe  —  I  do  not  mean  that  I 
doubt  you  —  I  mean  I  —  I  -  He  stopped ;  then 
made  another  effort.  "I  trust  you  will  not  misunder 
stand  me  —  I  trust  you  will  bear  with  me  when  I  say 
I  can't  believe  —  I  don't  believe  my  son  would  so 
wrong  —  He  had  to  stop  again. 

"Would  Paula  lie  about  it  ?  What  for ?"  said  Mrs. 
Jameson. 

The  rest  looked  at  one  another,  groping  for  an  answer. 
Suddenly  Mrs.  Gilbert  became  aware  that  her  daughter 
and  a  young  man  were  in  the  room  —  a  young  unmarried 
man  and  woman.  "You  oughtn't  to  be  here,  Lorrie  — 
you  and  Van,"  she  said  distressfully. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  185 

Van  Cleve  obediently  turned  to  the  door,  in  a  turmoil 
of  shame  and  sympathy ;  but  Bob's  father  interposed 
quickly.  "Van  Cleve  —  Van!  Don't  go!  You're 
Bob's  friend  —  don't  go  !  " 

"Oh,  mother,  it  doesn't  make  any  difference  —  noth 
ing  makes  any  difference  except  whether  this  is  true  or 
not.  That's  all  that  matters!"  said  Lorrie.  They 
looked  at  her.  It  was  so.  Nothing  mattered  but  the 
truth.  The  kindly,  well-meant  screens  and  shams  of 
daily  intercourse  were  all  abolished ;  there  they  stood, 
men  and  women,  with  their  miserable  knowledge,  like 
people  around  a  corpse. 

"Did  she  — did  Paula  tell  you  so?"  Mrs.  Gilbert 
asked,  unconsciously  clenching  her  hands  together. 
"  Did  she  say  it —  it  was  Bob?  " 

"Yes.  I  made  her  tell  me.  She  didn't  want  to,  but 
I  made  her.  Will  you  send  for  him  ?" 

Mrs.  Gilbert  put  out  a  hand  blindly  and  caught  hold 
of  a  table  and  clung  to  it,  trembling.  It  was  that  little 
old  table  with  the  decanter  of  peach-brandy,  and  the 
thing  rocked  over  now,  struck  against  the  wall,  and  went 
smashing  unregarded  to  the  floor,  and  the  heavy,  gummy 
liquor  splashed  and  ran  down  over  the  wall  in  a  thick 
stream.  That  was  like  the  stain  on  the  family  honor ; 
it  would  never  come  off. 

"I  cannot  believe  it,"  Professor  Gilbert  said  again. 
"Bob  has  been  w^ild  —  he  has  been  wild,  but  he — 
he  -  '  torturing  doubt  appeared  on  his  face ;  his  eyes 
sought  Van  Cleve's  in  unhappy  appeal.  "Van  Cleve, 
you've  always  been  his  friend  —  you  know  him  better 
than  anybody  —  much  better  than  I.  I've  never 
known  how  to  —  to  do  right  with  Bob,"  said  the  father, 
humbly.  "Do  you  believe  it  ?" 

The  young  man  hung  his  head ;  he  too  had  been 
thinking  that  Bob  was  wild,  was  weak.  "All  that  talk 
about  never  harming  anybody  but  himself,  what  does 
that  amount  to?  If  a  fellow  lets  go  of  himself  one 


186  VAN   CLEVE: 

way,  he's  bound  to  let  go  of  himself  other  ways/7  he 
thought  gloomily.  "But  if  he  did  do  this,  by  God,  I 
know  it  wasn't  all  Bob's  fault!"  Aloud,  he  could 
only  say  huskily,  "Mr.  Gilbert,  I  don't  want  to 
believe  it."  The  words  sounded  as  hard  as  his  hard 
face  looked,  yet  they  were  uttered  with  real  suffer 
ing. 

"  Are  you  going  to  send  for  him  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Jameson. 

There  was  another  unhappy  silence ;  they  could  hear 
the  water  rustling  along  the  gutter  and  down-spout  at 
the  corner  of  the  porch  ;  the  storm  had  come,  and  burst, 
and  passed  since  they  had  been  in  this  room,  and  not 
one  of  them  had  noticed  it ;  and  it  was  not  yet  ten  min 
utes  !  Mrs.  Gilbert  at  last  spoke,  raising  her  head. 
"Bob  shall  come  back,  Mrs.  Jameson,"  she  said,  firmly 
and  clearly.  "He  must  come  back.  If  he  —  if  they 
have  done  wrong,  it  will  be  righted.  Young  people 
don't  always  seem  to  know  —  they  don't  mean  to  be 
wicked,  they're  just  foolish  -  She  paused,  fighting 
for  self-control ;  and  before  their  mental  vision  there 
rose  the  picture  of  the  pretty,  little,  soft,  silly  girl,  the 
reckless,  good-natured,  self-indulgent  young  man.  It 
was  sad,  it  was  shameful ;  but  was  it  so  very  strange, 
was  it  wholly  their  fault?  "Why  weren't  you  taking 
better  care  of  your  daughter,  woman  ?"  the  one  mother 
wanted  to  cry  out.  "And  why  didn't  you  put  better 
principles  into  your  son,  Ellen  Gilbert?"  Conscience 
inquired  sternly.  "It  shall  be  made  right  —  Bob  shall 
make  it  right  —  we  want  it  as  much  as  you  do,"  Mrs. 
Gilbert  began  again.  She  turned  to  her  husband  with  a 
fevered  eagerness.  "We'll  telegraph  him  —  can't  we 
telegraph?  I  mean  to-night  —  now  —  at  once;  can't 
we?" 

"If  —  if  we  knew  where  he  is,"  said  the  Professor,  in 
helplessness.  He  took  off  the  eye-shade  and  spectacles 
which  he  had  been  wearing  all  this  while,  and  laid  them 
down  under  the  lamp  with  nervous  and  shaky  move- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  187 

ments ;  on  a  sudden,  he  seemed  to  have  become  an  old 
man  —  old  and  infirm.  "Let  me  think  —  I  have  to 
think  a  little,"  he  said,  brushing  a  hand  across  his  eyes. 

Lorrie  went  to  her  mother's  side  with  an  anxious  look 
into  her  face,  and  picked  up  Mrs.  Gilbert's  hand  and 
began  to  stroke  it  gently.  "Bob  wouldn't  come  any 
how  for  a  telegram,  mother.  How  could  you  tell  him 
what  was  the  matter?"  she  said  quietly.  "What 
could  we  say  in  a  telegram,  or  even  a  letter?  Never 
mind,  mother  dear,  one  of  us  will  go  and  find  him  and 
bring  him  home.  Never  mind  ! " 

"I  was  thinking  of  that,"  said  her  father,  with  his 
drawn  brows.  "I  —  could  I  see  you  at  the  bank  to 
morrow,  Van  Cleve?" 

"No,  no,  you  don't  need  to.  I  have  money  —  I  have 
plenty  of  money  --  I  can  get  more  !"  Mrs.  Jameson  cried 
incoherently ;  her  woman's  mind  rushed  forward  to  an 
understanding  while  Van  Cleve  was  yet  wondering  what 
the  Professor  meant  to  do,  or  wanted  at  the  bank.  She 
snatched  out  an  ornate  purse  of  gilded  and  wrought 
leather,  with  chains  and  trinkets  dangling  from  it  and 
tried  to  force  it  on  him.  "See,  there's  plenty  —  take 
it  all  —  take  it !  I've  got  more  —  I  can  get  more  — 
it's  my  own  money,  you  know.  Don't  wait  for  any 
banks,  or  letters,  or  anything  !  You've  got  to  get  him 
here  soon  —  please  don't  wait ! "  Suddenly  her  features 
quivered ;  she  dropped  all  the  money  at  his  feet  and 
shrank  back,  covering  her  face,  and  a  heavy  sob  shook 
her.  The  two  men  were  inexpressibly  touched  by  the 
sight,  by  the  pitiful  offering  —  and  the  two  women, 
strange  as  it  would  seem,  not  at  all.  Yet  they  were  both 
good,  tender-hearted  women.  Lorrie  stooped  and 
painstakingly  recovered  the  bills  and  silver  and  pennies 
that  had  scattered  in  every  direction. 

"We  don't  want  this,  Mrs.  Jameson,"  she  said 
coldly,  returning  it. 

The  other  gazed  at  her  affrightedly  through  her 


188  VAN  CLEVE: 

tears.  "I  didn't  m-mean  any  harm  !"  Paula's  mother 
quavered.  "  I'm  sorry  to  m-make  trouble.  I'm  going 
to  take  Paula  away  somewhere,  so  nobody  will  know 
about  it,  but  I  c-couldn't  help  -  '  she  broke  down 
again.  Her  brief  flame  of  courage  and  resolution  had 
burned  out ;  she  could  only  plead  and  whimper  weakly 


now. 

u 


If  you  could  manage  it  with  your  bank  people, 
Van  ?  I  don't  know  much  about  business  methods. 
I  have  never  been  obliged  to  —  to  raise  money  hurriedly 
before,"  said  Professor  Gilbert,  in  a  pathetic  anxiety; 
"my  —  my  personal  note  —  ?" 

" That's  all  right,  Mr.  Gilbert,"  Van  Cleve  said,  in 
ordinately  relieved  at  the  introduction  of  this  safe, 
commonplace,  familiar  subject ;  he  felt  as  if  his  feet 
were  on  solid  ground  at  last.  "I'll  get  the  money  for 
you,  any  amount  you  say  —  I'll  fix  all  that  - 

"  You  can't  go,  father,"  Lorrie  interrupted.  "You 
can't  get  away  now.  You'd  have  to  explain  - 

Her  father's  glance  turned  to  the  examination-papers. 
"I  don't  know-  '  he  murmured;  "I  could  make  an 
arrangement,  I  think  - 

"I  will  go,"  said  Lorrie. 

Her  father  and  mother  stared  at  her,  startled.  Mrs. 
Jameson,  crumpled  into  a  chair,  ceased  her  moaning  to 
gaze  up  at  the  girl  in  awed  admiration  and  wonder. 
That  a  woman  could  speak  or  act  with  any  sort  of 
promptness,  energy,  or  decision,  coolly  as  if  it  was  her 
habit,  seemed  to  Paula's  mother  something  abnormal ; 
she  did  not  like  Lorrie  and  was  afraid  of  her,  yet  trusted 
her  devoutly.  It  was  Van  Cleve  who  began  to  protest. 

"Why,  Lorrie,  you  can't  do  that!  You  can't  go 
running  around  trying  to  hunt  up  Bob.  You  haven't 
any  idea  what  sort  of  places  you  might  —  that  is,  he 
might  —  you  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about. 
It's  no  place  for  women  - 

"How  about  the  nurses?"  said  Lorrie;  "Miss  Rodg- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  189 

ers  —  you  know  ?  At  Christ's  ?  —  Miss  Rodgers  is 
going.  She's  going  this  week.  She  spoke  to  me  the 
other  day  about  it,  because  she'd  heard  I  had  said  I'd 
like  to  go  with  the  Red  Cross.  I  could  go  with  her." 

"  You  can't !     It's  insane  —  ! " 

"Van's  right,  Lorrie ;  you  oughtn't  to  think  of  going," 
said  Mrs.  Gilbert  in  alarm. 

"Mother,  you  know  Bob  would  listen  to  me  —  he'd 
pay  more  attention  to  me  than  to  anybody  else.  I  can 
do  more  with  Bob  than  anybody  else  —  more  than  you 
or  father  - 

"That's  true,"  said  Professor  Gilbert  with  a  kind  of 
groan. 

"Lorrie,  don't  talk  that  way  —  as  if  Bob  had  to  be 
made!"  said  her  mother,  tremulously;  "Bob  will  do 
right,  as  soon  —  as  soon  as  he  knows.  I  know  he  will. 
Bob's  not  bad.  He  may  have  been  wild  —  ever  so 
many  young  men  are  —  but  he's  always  done  right 
in  the  end,  or  —  or  tried  to.  You  know  he  has,"  said 
the  poor  mother,  breaking  down  at  last  in  her  turn ; 
"  you  oughtn't  to  talk  that  way  about  him  —  your  own 
brother  —  and  everybody's  so  against  him,  anyhow  —  ! " 

It  was  late  when  Van  Cleve  went  out  and  called  a 
carriage  and  put  Mrs.  Jameson  into  it  to  take  her  home 
—  a  silent  and  dreary  journey,  although  the  poor 
woman  herself  would  probably  have  talked  eagerly,  in 
the  relief  and  reaction  of  the  moment,  if  she  had  had  the 
slightest  encouragement.  "Do  you  think  Miss  — 
Miss  Lorrie  ought  to  go  that  way  by  herself  ?  Do  you 
think  she  really  will,  Mr.  Kendrick?"  she  asked  him, 
timidly.  "I'd  be  afraid  of  my  life.  I  don't  see  how 
she  dares.  She's  very  unusual,  isn't  she?"  Mrs. 
Jameson  added,  remembering  that  she  had  heard 
something  about  the  young  man's  devotion  in  that 
quarter,  and  with  some  idea  of  making  herself  agree 
able.  To  her  dismay,  he  scowled. 


190  VAN   CLEVE: 

"Miss  Gilbert  won't  be  by  herself/'  he  said  briefly. 

"I  know.  That  Miss  Rodgers —  that  nurse,  of 
course  -  "  said  Mrs.  Jameson,  hastily,  perturbed.  Van 
Cleve  made  no  comment,  glowering  silently  out  of  the 
carriage  window  at  the  night  scene  of  shining  wet 
pavements,  tracked  with  lights,  and  the  hurrying  trolley- 
cars  with  their  soaked  storm  curtains  pulled  tight.  After 
a  while,  Mrs.  Jameson  ventured  again,  even  more  ner 
vously  than  before,  - 

"Mr.  Kendrick,  you  —  you  won't  tell  anybody?" 

"Tell  anybody  ?"  echoed  Van  Cleve,  not  understand 
ing. 

"About  us  —  about  Paula  —  about  this  evening?" 
faltered  Mrs.  Jameson,  leaning  forward  and  clutching 
at  his  knee  in  her  anxiety.  "You  won't  tell  ? " 

"No,  I  won't  tell,"  said  the  young  man,  recoiling 
throughout  his  whole  being.  What  was  the  woman 
made  of?  Or  what,  in  Heaven's  name,  did  she  think 
he  was  made  of  ? 

"I'm  ever  so  much  obliged.  You're  doing  a  great 
deal  for  us.  I'm  awfully  obliged,"  said  Mrs.  Jameson, 
weakly,  conscious  of  a  certain  inadequacy  about  these 
phrases ;  but  her  pinchbeck  vocabulary  afforded  noth 
ing  better.  Van  Cleve  left  her  at  her  hotel,  and  paid 
the  cabman  and  went  off  home.  He  went  upstairs  to 
his  boarding-house  room,  and  got  a  travelling-bag  out  of 
the  closet. 


PART   II 

CHAPTER  I 

IN   WHICH   WE   CONCENTRATE   AT   TAMPA 

ON  a  hot,  wet,  stifling  day  of  June  —  it  was  the 
twenty-fourth  or  towards  that  date  — -  a  train  from  the 
North  got  into  the  station  at  Tampa,  Florida,  some  six 
or  seven  hours  late,  as  was  not  unusual,  and  discharged 
its  passengers  upon  the  cinder  esplanade  which  was  al 
ready  crowded  with  men  in  uniform,  men  out  of  uniform, 
dogs,  boys,  crates,  barrels,  mules,  colored  women,  drays, 
boxes  labelled  "6th  Regmt.  U.  S.  Inft.  Rush" 
"  Lieut.  W.  W.  Branscombe,  3d.  Penn.  Vol.  Cav. 
Personal,"  and  so  on.  The  train  discharged  into  the 
middle  of  all  this,  and  of  the  proportionate  uproar  and 
bewilderment,  a  little  party  of  travellers,  some  of  whom 
we  ought  to  be  able  to  recognize  by  this  time.  The 
girl  in  the  gray  coat-and-skirt  suit  with  the  pretty  face, 
rather  tired  and  pale  just  now,  and  with  an  anxious  look 
in  her  brown  eyes,  which  roam  about  as  if  there  were 
somebody  whom  she  half  expects  and  half  dreads  to  see 
—  that  is,  of  a  surety,  Miss  Lorrie  Gilbert.  And  there 
is  an  active,  alert,  well-built  woman  a  head  taller  and 
five  years  older  than  Lorrie  who  must  be  the  trained 
nurse,  Miss  Rodgers  from  Christ's  Hospital,  sent  down 
here  to  the  kindred  military  establishment  at  Tampa, 
or  Key  West,  she  herself  is  uncertain  which.  But  for 
her,  I  suppose  the  presence  of  that  tall,  raw-boned, 

191 


192  VAN  CLEVE: 

ungainly  young  man  (V.  C.  Kendrick,  you  may  read 
the  initials  on  the  end  of  his  suit-case),  I  say  but  for  Miss 
Rodgers,  his  presence  in  company  with  Miss  Gilbert  at 
this  distance  from  home  would  undoubtedly  be  a  scan 
dal;  however,  let  Mrs.  Grundy  possess  her  soul  in 
peace,  Lorrie  and  Van  are  not  eloping,  and  they  are 
sufficiently  chaperoned.  There  is  even  another  trained 
nurse  along,  some  subordinate  of  Miss  Rodgers's,  the 
stout  young  woman  with  the  fine  complexion  — Van 
Cleve  never  can  remember  her  name.  Mr.  Kendrick 
displays  great  promptness  and  efficiency  in  getting  his 
ladies  off  the  car,  in  accumulating  their  belongings,  and 
marooning  the  party  safely  upon  a  reef  of  luggage  out  of 
the  crowd  and  the  torrid  sunshine,  while  he  starts  off  to 
find  a  conveyance  and  incidentally  whatever  informa 
tion  about  the  town  he  can  pick  up.  "Say,  Jim,  git 
on  to  Brigham  Young  in  the  blue  sack-suit !"  a  lounging 
khaki-clad  gentleman  with  a  toothpick  in  one  corner  of 
his  mouth,  and  52d  Mich.  V.  I.  on  the  front  of  his 
slouch  hat  observes  to  another,  facetiously  noting  Van's 
activities ;  by  good  luck,  the  latter  does  not  hear  him. 

"They  say  the  train  goes  on  somewhere  across  the 
river  and  backs  right  up  into  the  grounds  of  the  Tampa 
Bay  Hotel,"  says  Miss  Rodgers,  staring  about  her ;  " isn't 
that  the  limit  for  you,  though  ?  I  never  heard  of  a 
train  running  around  hunting  up  hotels  before.  Look, 
that  must  be  a  Cuban  !  No,  I  don't  mean  him  —  I 
mean  him  —  the  one  that  looks  like  a  mulatto,  only  he 
isn't.  That's  what  we're  fighting  for  !" 

The  other  nurse  remarks  in  a  strain  of  cheerful  fatal 
ism  fostered  by  three  days  and  nights  of  travel  beset 
with  surprises  and  uncertainties,  that  you  can't  tell 
what  you  may  have  to  go  up  against  down  here; 
you've  just  got  to  take  it  as  it  comes.  And,  "  Was  your 
brother  going  to  meet  you  here,  Miss  Gilbert?"  she 
asks  with  interest. 

"No.    I  —  I  don't  even  know  where  he  is,  you  see. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  193 

I  couldn't  send  him  word.  I'll  have  to  look  for  him/' 
says  Lorrie,  nervously,  plucking  at  the  edge  of  her  veil. 
The  two  nurses  exchange  a  glance  behind  her  back.  I 
believe  they  are  not  less  sympathetic  for  being  devoured 
with  curiosity.  They  know  all  about  her  engagement ; 
trained  nurses  always  know  who  is  Who  in  Society  and 
What  is  being  done ;  they  study  the  Jottings  column 
as  devoutly  as  the  Testament.  These  two  think  that 
Lorrie  is  as  sweet  as  she  can  be,  and  no  wonder  she's 
frightened  to  death  about  her  feeonsay  going  off  to  the 
army ;  they  have  offered  freely  to  bet  each  other  that 
she's  ten  times  more  upset  about  him  than  about  her 
brother.  But  what  is  it  that's  wrong  about  the  brother, 
anyhow  ?  They  can't  make  it  out,  but  (again  they  bet) 
there's  something  behind  it.  Wasn't  there  some  talk 
about  his  being  a  dope-fiend,  or  something?  One  of 
them  heard  it  when  she  was  nursing  that  typhoid  case 
on  the  North  Hill ;  the  Gilberts  go  with  all  that  swell 
North  Hill  crowd,  you  know.  They  bet  once  more 
that  that  is  the  reason  Mr.  Kendrick  came  down  with 
them  to  Tampa ;  that  girl  couldn't  manage  any  dope 
case  by  herself  !  The  question  had  agitated  them  for 
all  these  three  days ;  nothing  to  be  got  out  of  Mr. 
Kendrick ;  he  said  he  just  thought  he'd  spend  his  vaca 
tion  taking  a  look  at  the  army,  but  pooh  !  You  couldn't 
fool  them  that  easy  !  "I'm  glad  he's  along,  anyhow," 
Miss  Rodgers  confided  to  her  associate.  "  I  tell  you,  it 
certainly  is  nice  sometimes  to  have  a  man  around  to 
look  out  for  you  and  kind  of  run  you.  I've  been  my 
own  boss  so  long,  I  didn't  realize  how  nice  it  was. 
And  Mr.  Kendrick  never  gets  fresh  and  talky  —  you 
know  —  he  never  gets  that  way.  That's  what  I  like 
about  him." 

"Yes,  but  he's  kind  of  stiff  and  —  and  distant,  more 
than  anybody  needs  to  be,"  said  the  stout  girl,  not  with 
out  resentment;  "do  you  suppose  there's  ever  been 
anything  between  him  and  Miss  Gilbert?" 


194  VAN  CLEVE: 

"Well,  if  there  ever  was,  he's  good  and  got  over  it 
now.  You'd  think  they  were  married,  he  pays  so  little 
attention  to  her,"  said  Miss  Rodgers,  with  a  half- 
laugh  ;  and  her  companion's  face  cleared. 

Lorrie  Gilbert  will  never  to  her  final  breath  forget 
these  hideous  days ;  sometimes  even  now,  years  after 
wards,  she  will  live  over  in  dreams  the  frenzied  hurry 
of  her  departure,  the  grief  and  suspense  and,  worst  of 
all,  the  4  intolerable  need  of  deception  that  drove  and 
harried  her.  Paula's  secret,  Bob's  secret,  laid  them 
all  under  its  shameful  bondage;  honorable  men  and 
women,  they  had  to  sit  down  together  ignobly  and 
concert  falsehoods  wholesale.  All  the  story  must  hold 
together,  and  they  must  take  care  not  to  contradict 
one  another !  She  must  pretend  that  she  was  going 
as  a  nurse,  and  of  course,  incidentally,  to  see  Bob  - 
oh,  yes,  she  would  see  Bob  !  Her  father  and  mother 
must  pretend  that  they  approved  of  it.  VanCleve 
(since  he  would  insist  on  accompanying  her  party) 
must  pretend  that  he  wanted  a  vacation  trip  !  She 
could  not  meet  a  girl  friend,  she  could  not  answer  the 
telephone,  or  write  a  note  without  an  adjusting  of  her 
mask  and  a  renewed  conning  of  her  role  —  and  there 
were  so  many  friends  to  see,  and  telephone-calls  to 
answer  and  notes  to  write  when  people  heard  of  her 
project.  They  made  a  nightmare  about  her  with  their 
kind  admiration  and  wonder  and  respect ;  she  listened 
to  her  own  easy  lies  with  loathing,  yet  believed  with 
the  whole  force  of  her  soul  that  she  was  doing  right. 
And  when  she  guessed  that,  in  spite  of  her,  there  were 
those,  like  the  two  nurses,  whose  suspicious  curiosity 
was  not  satisfied,  terror  possessed  her  utterly.  It  was 
the  same  with  her  mother,  with  her  father.  I  doubt 
if  Paula  Jameson  ever  felt  a  tenth  part  so  guilty  as 
any  one  of  the  upright,  blameless  people  caught  in 
the  meshes  of  her  wretched  intrigue.  Certainly  she 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  195 

did  not  exhibit  much  gratitude  in  return  for  all  their 
care  and  worry. 

Lorrie  had  gone  to  see  the  girl,  finding  her  silent  and 
strangely  self-possessed  or  self-contained  now.  She  did 
not  complain,  and  she  made  no  excuses  for  either  her 
self  or  Bob ;  in  fact,  she  would  not  speak  of  the  young 
man  at  all,  out  of  some  perverse  notion  of  loyalty  or 
self-sacrifice,  Lorrie  guessed.  "  You'll  see  she  won't 
say  right  out  it  was  him  —  you  can't  make  her  say  it 
right  out,"  Mrs.  Jameson  explained  to  Lorrie  in  a 
voluble  whisper  outside  the  door.  "She  just  cries  if 
you  ask  her  about  him.  It  took  me  hours  to  find  out 
wrho  it  was  the  other  day.  My,  I  can  understand  that, 
can't  you?  Any  woman  can  understand  that!  I 
believe  she's  sorry  now  she  told  me  —  or  let  me  find  out, 
rather.  But  you  just  go  on  in  and  talk  to  her,  anyhow ; 
don't  mind  the  way  she  acts.  She  —  it's  the  way  she 
is  —  she  ain't  well  —  and  —  and  she  ain't  going  to  be 
well  for  a  while  yet,  you  know,  Miss  Gilbert,"  said  Mrs. 
Jameson,  shamefacedly.  "I'm  going  to  take  her  away 
-  I've  found  a  place  down  in  the  country.  There's 
a  good  doctor  there,  and  I  can  telegraph  for  a  nurse 
any  time.  I'll  give  you  the  address,  in  case  —  but 
we  don't  want  to  bother  you  or  your  folks  any  more 
than  we  can  help,  Miss  Gilbert.  You've  been  just  as 
kind  as  can  be.  And  I  know  you're  going  to  do  every 
thing  you  can  to  get  your  brother  back  -  '  her  voice 
failed.  It  went  to  Lome's  heart  to  see  the  poor  woman 
so  humble  and  grateful.  Mrs.  Jameson  had  aged  a  life 
time  in  the  last  few  days ;  her  red  hair  was  twisted  up 
in  a  loose  knot,  regardless  of  its  accustomed  puffs  and 
braids  and  carefully  set  undulations,  and  of  the  gray 
streaks  that  were  beginning  to  show  in  it  here  and  there  ; 
her  corsets  were  relaxed  for  the  first  time  in  twenty 
years ;  she  was  puzzling  over  a  Butterick  pattern  with 
the  scissors  in  one  hand  and  yards  of  incalculably  fine 
lawn  spread  upon  the  bed  before  her,  when  Lorrie  was 


196  VAN   CLEVE: 

ushered  in.  "It's  queer,  the  things  are  so  little,  but 
they're  just  as  much  trouble  to  make  as  if  they  were 
big.  I  used  to  sew  pretty  well,  too,  once,"  she  sighed, 
looking  at  Lorrie  with  wholly  maternal  eyes. 

She  kept  out  of  Paula's  room,  during  this  visit,  with 
a  delicacy  nobody  would  have  expected  of  her ;  it  was 
better  for  the  two  young  women  to  be  alone.  Lorrie 
told  the  other  what  they  were  doing;  she  assured 
Paula  with  strong  emotion  that  everything  would  be  all 
right ;  that  Bob  would  come  back  to  her ;  that  when 
he  realized  the  wrong  that  he  had  done,  how  foolish 
and  selfish  he  had  been,  he  would  be  the  most  anxious 
of  them  all  to  make  it  right.  "He's  not  bad  —  he's 
not  a  bad  man  —  and  of  course  he  —  he  cares  for  you, 
Paula,"  said  Lorrie,  shrinking  from  the  word,  even  the 
thought,  love,  in  such  a  connection.  Of  course  Bob  and 
Paula  must  be  in  love,  after  their  fashion,  the  girl  had 
concluded ;  but  she  recoiled  from  what  seemed  to  her 
the  animal  ugliness  of  it.  Yet  Lorrie  was  no  nun  in 
spirit ;  she  was  a  warmly  living  woman  who  more  than 
once  had  been  conscious  of  riotous  impulses  in  her 
own  young  blood,  wakened  by  a  touch,  a  look;  but 
she  could  not  imagine  herself  mastered  by  them.  The 
natural  cleanliness  and  strength  of  her  character  were 
reenforced  by  all  her  environment  and  education.  There 
were  unfortunate  women,  and  there  were,  undoubtedly, 
brutes  of  men ;  but  that  they  should  exist  in  her  own 
class  and  caste  had  been  a  thing  inconceivable  hitherto. 
Try  as  she  would,  the  sympathy  she  wanted  to  feel  and 
show  for  Paula  was  forced  and  unreal,  and  perhaps  the 
other  girl  felt  it  to  be  so.  She  sat  unresponsive  to  all 
Lome's  feverish  earnestness. 

"That  Mr.  Kendrick  knows.  I  don't  see  why 
Momma  had  to  let  him  know.  I  think  it  was  real 
dumb  of  her,"  she  said  sulkily ;  "she'll  go  telling  some 
body  else,  if  she  don't  look  out." 

"Why,  it  just  happened  so  —  your  mother  couldn't 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  197 

help  his  knowing  —  and  anyway  he's  just  like  a  brother 
to  Bob,  you  know,  Paula.  He'll  never  say  anything/' 
protested  Lorrie,  quickly,  repelled.  Paula's  mother 
was  doing  the  best  she  could  for  her,  poor  thing  ! 

"I  don't  like  him.  I  don't  see  why  she  had  to  tell 
it  before  him,"  Paula  repeated,  shrugging  peevishly ; 
and  she  let  Lorrie  kiss  her  and  go  away  with  hardly 
another  word. 

It  is  likely  that  Van  Cleve,  who,  as  he  would  have 
frankly  owned,  cared  nothing  for  the  Jameson  women, 
mother  or  daughter,  was  as  much  disturbed  over  his 
unfortunate  knowledge  as  Paula  herself ;  he  would 
have  been  thankful  to  have  been  out  of  the  whole  miser 
able  business.  But  being  involved  against  his  will, 
he  meant  to  see  it  through.  What  made  the  situation 
serious  for  the  young  man  was  the  way  it  affected 
Lorrie.  Van  exhausted  every  argument,  he  suggested 
half  a  dozen  other  plans,  he  lost  his  temper  and  fumed, 
to  no  avail ;  nothing  he  could  say  or  do  would  persuade 
her  out  of  going  on  what  he  considered  about  as  wild 
and  foolhardy  a  quest  as  any  woman  could  undertake. 
He  said  to  himself  in  despair  that  she  was  just  like  his 
Aunt  Myra  for  all  the  world  !  Reason  was  not  in 
women.  And  could  anything  equal  the  supreme  con 
fidence  with  which  Lorrie  and  her  mother  spoke  of  her 
ascendency  over  Bob!  That  was  all  very  well;  she 
might  be  able  to  manage  Bob  when  she  got  hold  of 
him,  but  first  get  hold  of  him!  In  what  unspeakable 
state,  and  in  what  unspeakable  camp,  troop-ship, 
slum  of  Tampa  or  Key  West,  or  even  Cuba,  if  she  got 
that  far  (which  Heaven  forbid  !)  might  she  not  find  him, 
after  a  search  among  hundreds  of  men  in  scores  of 
such  places!  And  when  he  had  painted  the  prospect 
in  as  lively  colors  as  he  could  muster  and  announced 
that  she  should  not  go  without  his  protection,  Mrs. 
Gilbert  added  the  last  straw  to  his  burden  of  impatience 
by  looking  alarmed  and  dropping  various  carefully- 


198  VAN   CLEVE: 

worded  hints  about  impropriety  !  "If  Lorrie  can  stand 
the  things  she's  going  to  see  and  hear,  alone,  in  a  place 
full  of  all  kinds  of  men,  she  can  very  well  stand  one  man 
going  down  on  the  same  train  with  her,  even  if  she  does 
unfortunately  know  him/'  he  said  severely;  and  Mrs. 
Gilbert  had  no  answer. 

He  who  had  never  asked  for  a  rest  or  favor  before 
had  no  difficulty  in  getting  this  ;  Mr.  Gebhardt,  indeed, 
dismissed  him  heartily  with  many  exhortations  to 
have  a  good  time,  and  burlesque  warnings  against 
enlistment.  In  fact,  Van  Cleve,  heartless  as  it  may 
seem,  did  have  a  fairly  good  time ;  he  could  not  keep 
Bob's  misdoing  and  the  nature  of  their  errand  before 
his  mind  constantly.  He  enjoyed  the  change  and 
bustle  and  the  humors  of  the  road ;  and  he  thought 
Miss  Rodgers  and  the  other  nurse,  the  pudgy  one  - 
he  could  not  remember  her  name  —  were  nice  women, 
even  if  they  did  ask  too  many  questions.  They  were 
quick-witted,  jolly,  sensible,  and  refreshingly  oblivious 
of  any  kind  of  impropriety  in  his  companionship.  In 
numerable  were  the  cigars  he  smoked,  the  games  of 
cards  he  took  a  hand  in,  the  stories  he  heard  and  told, 
in  the  " smoker"  while  the  train  screeched  and  rattled 
across  the  sweltering  Southern  countryside.  At  Mont 
gomery  he  got  a  cinder  in  his  eye,  and  Miss  —  the  fat 
girl,  whatever  her  name  was  —  got  it  out  for  him  with 
signal  gentleness  and  dexterity.  "The  fellow  that 
gets  you  will  be  lucky/'  said  Van,  and  wondered  at  the 
way  she  blushed  and  giggled;  "I  mean  gets  you  for 
a  nurse,  you  know/'  he  added;  she  turned  redder 
still  and  flounced  off,  and  would  hardly  speak  to  him 
the  rest  of  the  day,  as  he  vaguely  noticed  ;  and  decided 
with  regret  that  he  must  have  made  himself  offensively 
familiar.  As  the  young  women  had  remarked,  he 
kept  himself  rather  aloof  from  Lorrie,  while  doing 
everything  he  could  think  of  for  her  comfort  in  his 
awkward  way,  heaping  her  seat  with  magazines  and 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  199 

books  and  baskets  of  fruit,  opening  and  shutting  win 
dows,  fetching  and  carrying  her  wraps  and  bags,  eagerly 
and  diffidently  kind.  Miss  Gilbert,  I  am  bound  to  say, 
received  all  of  this  from  him  without  effusive  gratitude, 
quite  coolly  and  as  a  matter  of  course.  She  was  used 
to  Van  Cleve,  whose  attentions  always  took  a  practical 
form;  and  between  her  brother  and  her  lover  poor 
Lome's  mind  was  too  filled  with  anxiety  and  unhappy 
forebodings  to  spare  Van  any  thought.  The  young 
man  knew  it ;  he  accepted  his  portion  with  his  habitual 
iron  philosophy.  "If  she  just  doesn't  kill  herself  with 
worry  and  excitement,  that's  all  I  ask!"  he  thought; 
and  sometimes  fell  to  wondering  uneasily  and  shrink- 
ingly  what  Lorrie  was  going  to  say  to  Bob  when  they 
finally  reached  him.  "Nobody's  heard  Bob's  side  yet. 
He  couldn't  do  anything  but  deny  it,  anyhow.  It's 
the  girl's  word  against  his  —  well,  I  don't  know  —  I 
don't  know  -  '  Van  Cleve  mused,  with  his  narrow  gray 
eyes  drawn  up,  and  the  hard  line  at  the  side  of  his 
mouth  showing  distinctly  —  "I  feel  mighty  sorry  for 
that  poor  mother  of  hers,  anyway  !"  he  always  finished. 

The  town  of  Tampa  is  of  sufficiently  ancient  a  foun 
dation  to  have  figured  in  our  history  a  good  while 
before  the  year  '98 ;  and  General  Shafter's  men  and 
his  ordnance  and  his  mules  and  his  wagons  and  every 
thing  else  that  was  his,  even  the  transports  that  lay 
off  Port  Tampa,  were  not  by  any  means  the  first  that 
this  unmartial-looking  burg  had  seen.  It  knew  at 
first  hand  all  our  bloody  struggles  with  the  Seminole 
and  other  savages  of  the  peninsula;  there  is,  indeed, 
an  old  fort  or  the  site  of  one  hereabouts,  and  many  of 
the  streets  bear  the  name  of  some  stout  Indian  fighter 
of  those  old  years.  Nothing  could  be  less  picturesque 
or  more  peaceful  than  its  aspect  nowadays;  and  the 
late  military  occurrences  are  well-nigh  as  completely 
forgotten  as  the  early  ones.  Yes,  they  are  forgotten 


200  VAN   CLEVE: 

even  by  that  very  large  body  of  residents  who,  one 
would  think,  should  remember  them  best,  those  whose 
race  we  took  up  arms  to  benefit,  the  Cuban  gentry  whom 
you  may  find  by  the  hundreds  engaged  at  rolling  tobacco 
and  kindred  occupations  in  the  score  or  more  of  huge 
establishments  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city.  I  doubt 
if  there  is  one  of  them  who  knows  any  more  about 
General  Shafter  than  he  does  about  General  Andrew 
Jackson;  the  battle  of  San  Juan  Hill  means  exactly 
as  much  to  them  as  the  battle  of  Agincourt ;  and  when, 
visiting  Tampa  in  the  interests  of  history,  I  asked  one  of 
these  patriots  (to  whom  I  was  referred  for  information) 
if  he  could  tell  me  something  about  the  Santiago  cam 
paign  or  the  reconcentrado  camps,  he  looked  upon  me 
blankly,  and  at  length  answered  in  a  brilliant  American 
style  that  he  would  prefer  something  easier  in  the  way 
of  a  question.  "Ask  me  something  easy!'7  were  his 
exact  words;  and  also:  "Naw,  I  don't  know  nothin' 
about  it  —  see  ?  I  wasn't  there  —  betcher  life  !"  says 
he,  with  thankful  fervor,  almost  equal  to  that  with  which 
he  later  accepted  a  trifling  recognition  of  his  services 
in  showing  me  over  the  factory.  This  gentleman 
appeared  to  have  been  perfectly  assimilated. 

The  place  was  full  of  an  exhilarating  noise  and  color 
that  day  when  Lorrie  reached  it;  the  wide  streets, 
unpaved  and  ankle-deep  in  sand,  wherein  the  army- 
wagons  had  worn  all  manner  of  holes  and  trenches, 
were  jammed  with  people ;  it  seemed  as  if  there  were 
flags  and  groups  of  white  tents  at  the  end  of  every 
vista,  and  bugle-calls  sounding  every  hour ;  across  the 
river,  there  were  pennants  streaming  from  the  minarets 
of  the  great  hotel;  exotic  trees  and  flowers  bloomed 
with  fantastic  exaggeration  in  all  the  dooryards;  and 
a  band  somewhere  in  the  offing  was  playing  vigorously 
—  "My  gal  is  a  high-bo'n  lady,"  it  proclaimed  in 
splendid  time  and  tune.  Something  of  the  sanguine 
excitement  communicated  itself  even  to  Lome's  troubled 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  201 

spirit ;  and  Van  Cleve,  after  he  had  got  them  all  safely 
installed  in  a  boarding-house  (on  Florida  Street,  a  com 
mon-looking  little  frame  building  which  is  still  there, 
for  I  saw  it  the  other  day  when  I  was  in  the  town) 
that  had  been  recommended  to  Miss  Rodgers  by  some 
Red  Cross  authority,  had  all  he  could  do  to  persuade 
the  girl  to  stay  there  quietly  while  he  himself  went  out 
and  made  inquiry  for  her  brother.  "I'll  find  Bob  if 
he's  in  Tampa,  and  I'll  bring  him  to  you,  Lorrie,  but 
you've  got  to  stay  here  so  I'll  know  where  to  find  you. 
This  is  no  place  for  women  to  be  tagging  around  after 
a  man/'  he  said  at  last  shortly,  quite  unconscious  of 
the  harshness  of  his  manner. 

"Yes,  Van,  I'll  —  I'll  do  whatever  you  say,"  said 
Lorrie,  meekly.  All  at  once  she  began  to  feel  un 
necessary  and  troublesome;  and  after  he  had  gone, 
crept  off  to  the  cramped,  little  stuffy  boarding-house 
bedroom,  and  cried  miserably  to  herself  with  her  face 
in  the  pillows.  Van  meant  well,  she  knew  that ;  about 
everything  that  mattered,  he  was  as  good  and  kind  as 
could  be,  and  thoughtful  too,  but  —  but  Philip  would 
not  have  spoken  to  her  that  way  ! 


CHAPTER  II 
IN  WHICH  A  CERTAIN  KIND  OF  NEWS  TRAVELS  FAST 

THE  efficient  Mr.  Kendrick,  starting  out  to  explore 
Tampa  in  search  of  his  friend,  had  no  very  clear  idea 
where  to  go  or  whom  to  ask,  for  all  his  efficiency.  Upon 
applying  to  the  heads  of  Bob's  paper,  a  measure  he 
had  had  the  forethought  to  take  before  leaving  home, 
he  had  been  told  that  they  did  not  know  where  the 
young  man  was,  and  furthermore  they  added  with 
some  strong  qualifying  adjectives  that  they  did  not 
care ;  as  far  as  the  Record  was  concerned,  there  was 
one  war-correspondent  less  in  Tampa  or  at  the  front, 
the  management  having  dismissed  (they  said  " fired") 
Gilbert  a  few  days  previously  ! 

"  Why,  wasn't  he  doing  all  right  ?"  Van  Cleve  asked, 
and  was  immediately  conscious,  with  a  kind  of  angry 
sinking  of  the  heart,  of  the  needlessness  of  the  question. 

" Doing  all  right?"  repeated  the  authority  whom  he 
addressed  —  and  whether  this  was  the  editor-in-chief 
or  some  other  editor,  or  what  position  he  occupied, 
Van,  who  had  never  been  inside  a  newspaper-office 
before,  was  entirely  ignorant ;  but  the  other  man  spoke 
like  one  of  the  powers.  "Doing  all  right?  Say,  you 
know  Gilbert,  don't  you?  Well,  then  — !"  he  made 
a  gesture.  "  What's  the  use  ?" 

What  was  the  use,  indeed?  Van  Cleve  came  away 
in  a  very  gloomy  mood ;  he  had  not  the  courage  to  tell 
Lorrie ;  the  family  had  enough  on  their  minds  already, 
and  they  would  learn  this  only  too  soon,  anyhow.  He 
felt  an  unhappy  certainty  that  Robert  would  not  come 

202 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  203 

home  because  of  being  thus  deposed ;  on  the  contrary, 
he  was  much  more  likely  to  stay  with  the  army  loafing 
and  drinking  till  his  money  gave  out,  and  then  getting 
somebody  to  stake  him  until  that  resource  was  ex 
hausted,  too,  after  which  he  might  possibly  beat  his 
way  home,  or  write  for  help  —  thus  thought  Van  Cleve, 
out  of  temper  and  out  of  heart. 

He  went  out  now  through  the  crowds  and  around  to 
the  corner  of  Tampa  and  Twiggs  streets,  where  was 
the  home  of  that  journal  to  whose  care  Bob's  mail  had 
been  directed.  The  place  was  in  a  prodigious  rush  of 
business,  messenger-boys  and  reporters  tearing  back 
and  forth,  and  bulletins  tacked  up  outside  about  which 
people  were  standing  three  and  four  deep  in  the  glare 
of  the  sun  with  the  thermometer  at  ninety.  There  was 
a  little  entry  with  offices  on  the  ground-floor  opening 
off  of  it  on  either  hand.  Van  Cleve  pushed  his  way 
in,  and,  feeling  himself  a  nuisance,  began  on  the  first 
person  he  could  reach,  a  shirt-sleeved  lad,  pounding 
away  on  a  typewriter  in  the  corner  with  his  collar  and 
tie  undone,  and  the  moisture  beading  off  his  chin.  He 
did  not  even  look  up  when  Van  spoke. 

"  Gilbert  ?  Ump  !"  he  made  a  negative  motion  with 
his  head  and  at  the  same  time  contrived  to  twitch  it 
in  the  direction  of  the  other  side  of  the  room.  "Ask 
the  boss." 

The  boss  was  a  stout  man,  chewing  the  butt  of  a  cold 
cigar,  and  dictating  to  a  young  woman  stenographer, 
with  his  foot  cocked  or  braced  up  on  the  rung  of  her  chair. 
He  stared  and  considered.  "Gilbert?  R.  D.  Gilbert? 
No,  I  don't  remember  him.  How  is  that,  anyhow?" 
he  said  to  the  stenographer  vaguely.  "Do  you  know 
anything  about  any  Gilbert?" 

She  did  not ;  and  they  both  eyed  Van  Cleve  with  a 
sort  of  fatigued  hostility,  the  man  gnawing  at  his  cigar, 
the  girl  with  her  hand  poised  above  the  wri ting-pad. 

"The  man  I  mean  is  a  war-correspondent  for  a  Cin- 


204  VAN   CLEVE: 

cinnati  paper-  Van  Cleve  began  again;  "he  had 
his  mail  - 

"Sa-ay,  how  many  correspondents  d'ye  think  we've 
had  here,  son  ?"  said  the  fat  man,  in  benevolent  irony ; 
"one  or  two?  You've  got  another  think  coming. 
Anyway,  they're  all  gone  now.  They  went  with 
Shafter  two  weeks  ago.  Don't  you  get  to  see  the 
papers  in  Podunk?" 

"I  was  going  to  say  he  had  his  mail  sent  here,  so  I 
thought  possibly  you'd  know  something  about  him," 
Van  explained.  "Don't  you  have  the  rural  free 
delivery  in  Tampa?" 

"Oh  !  Well  now,  Mr.  Soyer  attended  to  that,  didn't 
he,  Jennie  ?  I  can  have  somebody  look  that  up,  if 
you'll  wait  —  we're  kind  of  busy  - 

It  appeared,  however,  upon  inquiry,  that  Mr.  Soyer 
had  gone  out  to  the  encampment  at  Tampa  Heights; 
he  had  gone  down  to  St.  Petersburg ;  he  had  gone  over 
to  the  Hotel  to  interview  somebody ;  in  fine,  Mr.  Soyer 
was  not  to  be  found.  Anyway,  the  probabilities  were 
that  the  man  the  gentleman  was  looking  for  was  in 
Cuba  —  that's  where  he  ought  to  be  if  he  was  on  his 
job.  What  paper  did  Van  represent  ? 

"I'm  not  representing  any  paper.  I'm  only  trying 
to  hunt  this  fellow  up,  because  he's  wanted  at  his  home. 
Sickness,"  said  Van  Cleve,  truthfully  enough.  It  had 
occurred  to  him  that  he  did  not  want  to  be  taken  for 
a  private  detective  in  search  of  a  criminal  —  an  aspect 
which  the  inquiry  gave  signs  of  assuming  ! 

"Sickness,  eh?  Too  bad!  Because  you're  not 
going  to  have  one  easy  time  finding  him,"  said  the  other, 
perfunctorily,  and  resumed  his  dictation. 

Van  Cleve  walked  out  again,  baffled.  He  went  up 
to  the  other  newspaper-office.  There  nobody  had  ever 
heard  of  Bob,  either ;  but  they  suggested  that  he  go 
down  to  Key  West  and  wait  until  one  of  the  Associated 
Press  boats,  which  were  constantly  "on  the  jump" 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  205 

between  Cuba  and  the  mainland,  came  in.  His  friend 
might  be  on  any  one  of  them.  "What  regiment  was 
he  with  ?  You  might  trace  him  that  way.  Most  of 
them  asked  to  be  assigned  to  some  particular  regiment, 
you  know/'  somebody  told  him.  "They  were  all 
going  and  getting  permits  or  credentials,  you  might 
call  'em,  from  the  staff  officer  that  had  it  in  charge  - 
Lieutenant  Miley,  I  believe  it  was." 

1 '  All  right.  Where'll  I  find  Miley  ?  He  might  know, 
or  have  it  listed  somewhere,"  said  Van,  promptly.  But 
the  others  began  to  laugh. 

"Lord  love  you,  man,  Miley 's  gone  to  Cuba  !  Now 
the  thing  for  you  to  do  is  to  go  on  down  to  Key  West, 
and  just  scout  around  for  those  despatch-boats,  like 
I'm  telling  you  -  '  they  advised  him  earnestly,  with 
a  good-natured  interest.  Van  Cleve  gratefully  shared 
the  three  cigars  he  happened  to  have  on  hand  amongst 
them,  and  lingered  awhile  listening  and  asking  ques 
tions,  and  hearing  mostly  that  pleasingly  free  criticism 
of  war  proceedings  at  which  civilians  and  onlookers 
are  invariably  so  apt.  As  he  left,  they  repeated  their 
assurances.  "There'll  sure  be  a  battle  before  long; 
our  fellows  have  landed,  you  know.  And  the  minute 
anything  happens,  the  press-boats  will  be  coming  in, 
thick  as  flies.  All  you've  got  to  do  is  to  wait  -  "  and 
so  on.  He  was  not  aware  of  having  been  any  more 
communicative  about  himself  and  his  business  than 
was  necessary,  and  later  received  a  shock  at  reading 
under  the  caption,  "Personals.  Arrivals  in  Tampa," 
that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kendrick  of  Cincinnati,  and  party 
were  stopping  at  the  Holt  House  ! 

Our  friend  had  consumed  most  of  the  afternoon  in 
this  fruitless  business,  and  now  faced  homeward  or 
boar  ding-house  ward  in  a  disagreeably  puzzled  and 
undecided  frame  of  mind.  "Nice  time  Lorrie  would 
have  had  down  here  by  herself!"  he  remarked  in 
wardly  ;  and  then  reflected  with  chagrin  that  her  efforts 


206  VAN   CLEVE: 

could  scarcely  have  been  more  futile  and  ill-directed 
than  his  own.  He  did  not  know  whether  to  go  to  Key 
West  or  not ;  if  the  discharge  had  arrived  in  time, 
Bob  might  not  have  left  with  the  army  after  all ;  he 
might  be  right  here  in  Tampa;  the  plain  truth  was, 
Bob's  whereabouts  was  a  matter  of  pure  guess  work. 
Van  found  himself  exasperated  by  the  inability  to  take 
some  kind  of  definite  action ;  never  before  in  the  whole 
of  his  narrow,  resolutely  ordered,  undeviating  career 
had  he  hesitated  over  his  course  or  waited  upon  another 
person's  pleasure.  By  and  by  he  fell  in  with  Miss 
Rodgers  and  the  other  nurse  who  had  gone  out  to  dis 
cover  what  they  might  about  their  own  assignment 
and  were  returning  in  a  state  of  irritation  similar  to 
his  own. 

"It's  the  worst  mix-up  you  ever  saw  !"  Miss  Rodgers 
complained  volubly ;  ' '  nobody  can  tell  us  who  the 
surgeon  is,  or  where  he  is,  that  we're  to  report  to.  They 
don't  seem  to  know  anything  about  their  own  business, 
so  I  suppose  it's  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  they  don't 
know  anything  about  ours.  We've  asked  about  forty 
dozen  adjutants  and  captains  and  brigadier-generals 
and  quartermasters,  and  not  one  of  'em  can  even  give 
us  a  steer  in  the  right  direction.  They  keep  telling 
us  that  the  hospital-ship  was  the  Olivette,  or  that  Miss 
Barton  has  gone  to  Cuba  with  her  ship,  and  anyway 
we're  too  late  to  be  of  any  use!  'I  know  all  that/ 
s'd  I  to  the  last  one ;  'if  you'd  just  listen  to  what  I'm 
telling  you  a  minute,'  s'd  I,  and  then  I  said  it  all  over 
again.  Tin  going  to  the  military  hospital  here  or 
wherever  you  need  nurses,'  and  he  just  looked  wild- 
eyed,  and  said  in  that  case  we'd  better  see  Major 
Thingummy  or  Colonel  What's  his  name  !" 

The  stout  young  woman  chimed  in  :  "It  made  me  so 
tired  having  'em  say  they  didn't  know  where  the 
hospital  was,  I  just  said  to  one:  'Well,  for  mercy's 
sake,  why  don't  you  get  a  pain  in  your  toe  or  a  case  of 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  207 

appendicitis  and  find  out! '  He  looked  just  as  mad  for 
a  minute,  and  then  he  kind  of  laughed." 

"Well,  it's  all  very  nice  to  laugh — but  I'm  here  to 
nurse  sick  men,  I'm  not  here  to  chase  around  tra-la-ing 
with  well  ones,"  said  her  superior,  impatiently.  She 
was  a  conscientious,  hard  worker,  and  had  all  the  pro 
fessional's  contempt  for  incompetence  and  waste  of 
energy.  "If  I  couldn't  run  an  army  better  than  this, 
I'd  take  a  back  seat  and  let  somebody  do  it  that 
could!" 

"They're  pretty  nearly  all  volunteer  troops,  you 
know.  The  regulars  are  better  managed,  I  guess," 
Van  reminded  her. 

"The  Lord  help  'em  if  they  aren't !"  retorted  Miss 
Rodgers,  fervently.  It  gave  Van  Cleve  a  queer  sense 
of  comfort  to  hear  the  two  hearty,  capable  women; 
and  that  they  should  be  knocking  about  the  camp  among 
all  the  crowds  and  sights  and  sounds  which  he  had  so 
peremptorily  forbade  Lome's  essaying,  nowise  offended 
him.  Lorrie  was  different ;  these  nurses  could  stand 
anything.  For  that  matter,  they  themselves  expected 
little  or  nothing  of  her.  "These  society  girls  — !" 
the  fat  little  nurse  had  remarked  to  Van  Cleve  privately 
with  a  knowing  smile ;  she  did  not  finish,  but  it  was 
amazing  with  wiiat  a  world  of  tolerance,  of  patient 
and  good-natured  superiority,  she  charged  the  three 
words.  Van  Cleve  understood ;  he  was  somewhat 
surprised  to  note  how  confidential  Miss  —  er  —  no 
use,  he  could  not  get  her  name  !  —  had  become  with 
him  in  the  few  days  of  their  acquaintance.  Seldom, 
in  fact  never  before,  had  any  girl  displayed  so  much 
taste  for  his  society.  And  now,  studying  his  face,  she 
said  quickly :  — 

"You  didn't  find  your  friend  —  Miss  Gilbert's 
brother  —  you  couldn't  find  him,  Mr.  Kendrick  ?  I'm 
so  sorry." 

"Better  luck  to-morrow  perhaps,"  said  Van,  trying 


208  VAN  CLEVE: 

to  speak  carelessly.  As  usual,  when  the  name  of  Miss 
Gilbert's  brother  came  up,  the  nurses  asked  no  questions, 
sending  each  other  a  brief,  warning  glance.  Something 
was  wrong  about  that  brother,  they  knew  it ! 

They  went  back  to  Lorrie  at  the  Holt  House  and  had 
their  supper,  during  which  meal  Van  Cleve  performed 
what  was  for  him  a  prodigy  of  dissimulation  by  re 
ferring  to  his  bootless  search  in  a  casual,  off-hand  manner 
with  no  hint  of  any  difficulties  and  with  a  matter-of- 
course  air  of  expecting  success  at  any  moment.  And 
he  further  gave  it  as  the  result  of  his  observations  that 
this  war  was  going  to  turn  out  a  picayune  business  after 
all  —  a  deal  of  cry  and  no  wool !  The  Spanish  were 
notoriously  much  better  at  running  away  than  fight 
ing  ;  witness  their  puerile  conduct  when  our  boats 
shelled  their  forts  and  coast  defences  which  they  in 
variably  abandoned  almost  without  striking  a  blow; 
witness  Dewey's  capture  of  Manila  without  the  loss 
of  a  man ;  witness  the  Spanish  fleet  scuttling  into 
Santiago  harbor  to  hide  like  a  parcel  of  frightened  cats ; 
witness  this  and  witness  that !  They  might  do  a  little 
bushwhacking  perhaps,  but  stand  against  the  advance 
of  our  army  ?  Never  !  The  minute  our  troops  landed, 
every  Spaniard  in  the  neighborhood  probably  beat  it 
for  the  tall  timber,  and  left  his  gun  behind  —  these 
were  Mr.  Kendrick's  graphic  and  humorous  words. 
According  to  him  there  would  be  no  danger,  no  wounds, 
no  fever,  no  anything  of  any  consequence ;  war  was 
the  most  delightful  occupation  of  the  human  race,  and 
he  seriously  regretted  that  he  had  not  enlisted  so  as  to 
see  some  of  the  fun.  He  gave  a  burlesque  rendition 
of  his  interviews  with  the  newspaper-men  that  sent 
Miss  Rodgers  and  her  colleague  into  fits  of  laughter 
and  even  succeeded  in  brightening  up  Lorrie ;  he  made 
amiable  jokes  about  the  eating,  which  indeed  was  very 
poor ;  he  entered  into  affable  converse  with  the  darky 
waiter  at  their  table ;  in  short,  never  was  there  so 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  209 

light-hearted  and  care-free  a  person  as  he.  The  nurses 
were  immoderately  entertained ;  they  had  not  known 
that  Mr.  Kendrick  was  so  lively  and  easy  —  easy  as  an 
old  shoe  !  As  for  Lorrie,  for  whose  sole  benefit  Van 
Cleve  was  painfully  going  through  this  exhibition,  the 
girl  ended  by  being  at  least  half  convinced  by  it,  and 
her  spirits  rose  proportionately.  Knowing  Van  as  she 
did,  she  could  not  have  believed  him  equal  to  so  much 
humane  hypocrisy ;  the  young  man,  when  he  had  time 
to  think,  listened  to  himself  with  astonishment.  "By 
Jove,  I'm  doing  as  well  as  Uncle  Stan  !  I  come  by  it 
rightly,  I  guess  !"  he  thought  mirthlessly. 

After  this  they  all  went  together  to  the  Tampa  Bay 
Hotel,  upon  the  motion  of  that  indefatigable  entertainer, 
Van  Kendrick,  who  seemed  determined  that  nobody, 
including  himself  perhaps,  should  be  alone  for  any 
length  of  time,  or  have  a  moment  for  thought.  "  Never 
mind  letters,  Lorrie ;  you  haven't  got  anything  to  write 
about,  and  you'll  have  plenty  of  time  after  a  while," 
he  ordered  her.  "  You  want  to  get  out  and  see  all  this. 
It's  a  very  remarkable  thing,  really,  and  it  won't  happen 
again  in  our  time.  Come  along  now."  In  fact,  there 
was  something  very  exhilarating  in  the  lights  and  noise 
and  movement,  and  the  curious  sense  of  nearness  to 
all  the  other  people,  so  many  thousands  of  them.  To 
feel  one's  self  alone  in  a  crowd  is  a  dreadful  experience, 
but  nobody  could  feel  alone  in  this  crowd,  not  even  in 
the  bedecked  corridors  of  the  Hotel,  which  the  news 
papers  said  were  " thronged  with  celebrities."  Van  Cleve 
got  his  party  four  rocking-chairs  around  a  teakwood 
stand  in  a  corner  encompassed  by  the  bronze  jardinieres 
and  Chinese  cabinets  and  ormolu  mirrors  and  marble 
statuary  and  astounding  tapestries  and  oil-paintings 
with  which  the  establishment  is  well  known  to  be  pro 
fusely  furnished ;  and  there  they  were  all  sitting  when 
for  a  final  dramatic  touch  an  old  acquaintance  happened 
upon  them,  amongst  all  the  aliens. 


210  VAN   CLEVE: 

This  was  Mr.  J.  B.  B.  Taylor,  of  all  men  in  the  world, 
and  he  has  since  described  the  meeting  with  a  good 
deal  of  interest.  "I  wasn't  much  surprised,"  he  says; 
"you  weren't  surprised  to  meet  anybody  in  Tampa 
those  days.  The  ends  of  the  earth  came  together  there. 
And  then,  you  know,  I'm  eternally  on  the  move  and 
running  into  people,  anyhow.  Just  a  minute  before 
I  had  come  across  a  man  I  knew,  a  Japanese,  some  kind 
of  an  attache  at  their  legation  in  Washington  that 
his  government  had  sent  down  to  follow  our  army 
around,  I  believe  —  a  little  Mr.  Takuhira  —  a  nice 
little  fellow.  He'd  been  educated  over  here,  and  that's 
how  I  came  to  know  him,  meeting  him  at  the  Harvard 
Society  banquets,  once  in  Philadelphia,  I  remember, 
and  two  or  three  times  after  that  —  Chicago,  Denver, 
I  can't  recall  the  other  places  —  class  of  '90  he  was, 
a  very  pleasant  fellow  —  I  think  he's  back  in  Japan 
now,  in  some  big  position  over  there.  He  knew  a  great 
many  of  the  newspaper-men  —  of  course  he  spoke  Eng 
lish  perfectly — and  they  called  him  Take-your-hair-off  ! 
But  I  was  going  to  tell  you  about  Kendrick.  I  was 
standing  talking  to  Takuhira  when  I  caught  sight  of 
him ;  here  he  was  with  Miss  Gilbert,  whom  at  that  time 
I  didn't  know  at  all,  and  two  other  ladies  that  I'd 
never  seen  before  either,  with  some  lemonades  in  front 
of  them,  listening  to  the  music  and  watching  the  crowds 
and  the  epaulets  and  uniforms  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  just 
as  if  it  were  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  for 
them  to  be  there.  Van  Cleve  looked  a  good  deal 
older  than  the  last  time  I  saw  him,  and  do  you  know 
my  first  thought  was :  '  Why,  those  aren't  his  own 
people  !  I'd  know  the  Van  Cleve  ladies  anywhere, 
and  those  aren't  any  of  them,  and  what's  become  of 
the  Major?  Can  Van  possibly  have  got  married  and 
annexed  another  family  to  take  care  of  ? '  Then  he  saw 
me,  and  got  up  and  spoke  right  away." 

So  J.  B.  was  introduced  to  the  assemblage,  and  Mr. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  211 

Takuhira,  too ;  and  if  the  little  Oriental  gentleman  was 
confounded  at  the  spectacle  of  a  single  young  man  in 
company  with  three  single  young  women  voyaging 
about  the  country  a  thousand  miles  from  home,  un 
questioned,  and  evidently  entirely  respectable,  he  was 
by  far  too  mannerly  to  show  it.  "  Take-your-hair-off 
was  used  to  American  ways,"  J.  B.  said  ;  "and  of  course 
the  Red  Cross  explained  everything,  anyhow.  You 
saw  dozens  of  nice  girls  going  around  by  themselves. 
I  think  Van  Cleve  was  glad  to  see  us ;  he  looked  fagged 
out,  and,  after  we  joined  them,  sat  back  and  let  us  do 
the  talking  as  if  he  wanted  a  rest.  Miss  Gilbert  and 
Takuhira  got  on  together  wonderfully;  it  turned  out  that 
they  had  some  mutual  friends  — ,  people  they  both 
knew,  that  is  —  anybody's  a  friend  when  you  meet 
away  from  home  —  Boston  and  Washington  people, 
and  I  believe  some  army  and  navy  men.  The  two 
nurses  talked  mainly  to  me ;  they  looked  at  Takuhira 
as  if  he  were  some  kind  of  educated  chimpanzee,  and 
I'm  sure  that's  how  they  classed  him.  That  youngest 
nurse  was  rather  making  eyes  at  Van  Cleve,  I  thought, 
but  he  didn't  seem  to  be  conscious  of  it  at  all ;  it  was 
rather  funny.  He  told  me  he  was  down  on  business, 
and  then  caught  himself,  and  said  :  '  That  is  —  well, 
I'm  taking  a  vacation  —  I'm  making  a  vacation  of  it, 
you  know.'  I  thought  he  didn't  look  much  like  a  man 
taking  a  vacation,  but,  of  course,  it  was  no  affair  of  mine. 
Van  Cleve  has  always  seemed  to  me  a  serious,  literal, 
all-work-and-no-play  sort  of  young  chap ;  his  life  has 
made  him  that  way,  I  suppose.  I  asked  him  about  the 
family,  and  he  said  they'd  gone  to  New  York  just  before 
Christmas,  and  stayed  there  all  winter,  but  moved  out 
to  the  country  somewhere  in  Connecticut  when  the 
hot  weather  came  on.  They're  always  moving  around, 
you  know." 

They  sat  there  talking,  J.  B.  said,  until  quite  late; 
and  it  was  after  they  had  all  said  their  good  nights, 


212  VAN  CLEVE: 

and  the  others  had  been  gone  some  time,  and  he  himself 
was  upstairs  in  his  room  getting  ready  for  bed,  that  on 
a  sudden,  a  tremendous  racket  broke  out  in  the  streets 
of  the  town  across  the  river,  quickly  spreading  to  the 
hotel  side,  bells  ringing,  whistles  tooting,  people  run 
ning  and  yelling,  and  by  and  by  guns  or  fire-crackers 
beginning  to  go  off  deafeningly.  He  hustled  himself 
into  some  clothes  again  and  ran  out,  meeting  in  the 
halls  other  half-dressed  men,  none  of  whom  knew  what 
was  happening;  they  were  guessing  everything  from 
a  fire-alarm  to  Spanish  gunboats  coming  up  to  shell 
Port  Tampa!  Takuhira  joined  them.  "He  was  the 
least  interested  man  present,  you  might  have  thought/' 
J.  B.  said  afterwards  with  a  laugh;  "but,  by  George, 
he  was  the  first  to  suggest  that  the  telegraph-office  was 
the  place  to  inquire  !  And  he  added,  as  calm  as  Buddha, 
that  '  very  possiblee  the  boats  mide  have  come  outt ! ' 
He  meant  Cervera's  fleet,  of  course.  It  sounded  so 
queer  in  his  precise,  grammatical  way  of  talking,  and 
with  no  more  expression  on  his  face  than  if  he  had  been 
carved  out  of  old  ivory,  with  jet  eyes.  All  the  rest  of 
us  gesticulating  and  shouting  like  lunatics  !" 

As  they  were  hurrying  over  the  bridge,  they  ran  into 
some  men  and  boys  who  wildly  reported  that  there 
had  been  a  battle ;  there  had  been  fighting  at  Santiago, 
and  our  boys  had  whipped,  of  course.  In  the  town  the 
streets  were  full  of  hurrahing  people,  and  all  the  bells 
and  sirens  were  going  madly;  it  was  just  before  the 
Fourth,  so  there  was  a  plentiful  supply  of  cannon- 
crackers  and  bonfire  material  besides.  J.  B.  and  the 
Japanese  attache  made  for  a  newspaper-office;  the 
crowd  was  so  wedged  together  outside  it  was  impossible 
to  get  through,  and  on  the  skirts  of  it  they  fell  in  again 
with  Van  Cleve  Kendrick;  Van  had  taken  his  ladies 
to  their  hotel  and  was  on  his  way  to  the  cot  he  had 
secured  in  a  rooming-house  when  the  excitement  began. 
Nobody  seemed  to  know  whence  the  information  came, 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  213 

but  everybody  was  sure  it  was  correct.  Victory ! 
Hurrah !  There'll  be  a  hot  time  in  the  old  town 
to-night  — ! 

"  I  suppose  it's  true  ?"  Van  Cleve  asked  the  man  next 
him.  "How  did  they  get  the  news  ?" 

"Why,  it  was  telegraphed  from  Jacksonville,  I 
believe  — " 

"Jacksonville!"  ejaculated  J.  B.  "They  could  make 
up  pretty  nearly  any  story  and  send  it  here  from 
Jacksonville  !" 

"No,  no,  it's  a  wire  from  Key  West,"  somebody  else 
volunteered.  Mr.  Takuhira,  however,  told  Van  Cleve 
in  his  neat  English  that  he  understood  most  of  the  news 
was  always  sent  by  despatch-boat  from  Kingston,  or 
by  the  cable  off  Cienfuegos  which  we  had  picked  up 
after  bombarding  and  destroying  the  Spanish  station 
there.  Presently  the  crowd  in  its  constant  shifting 
allowed  them  to  press  farther  in ;  bulletins  were  already 
posted,  but  the  heads  and  hats  were  so  thick  in  front 
of  them  that  only  the  topmost  lines  could  be  seen  from 
the  edge  of  the  sidewalk  by  a  tall  man  like  Van  Cleve 
or  J.  B.  Taylor.  Those  nearest  the  boards  began 
obligingly  to  pass  back  bits  of  information.  The  first 
fight  of  the  land  forces  had  occurred  at  a  place  called 
Las  Guasimas;  the  Rough  Riders  and  Tenth  Cavalry 
(all  of  them  dismounted)  had  been  engaged ;  they  had 
driven  the  Spaniards  back  after  a  stubborn  resistance ; 
it  was  not  possible  at  the  moment  of  writing  to  estimate 
the  loss  on  either  side,  but  the  Spaniards'  had  been  the 
most  severe ;  of  the  United  States  troops  engaged,  the 
following  were  known  to  have  been  killed :  — 

"Captain  Allen  Capron  —  it  says  Captain  Allen 
Capron,"  repeated  the  man  in  front  of  Van  Cleve, 
turning;  "d'ye  know  any  of  'em?"  he  asked  paren 
thetically. 

"I  know  one  man,"  said  Van,  outwardly  calm  at  least, 
"Much  obliged.  Can  you  read  any  more  ?" 


214  VAN   CLEVE: 

"  Can't  read  any.  It's  this  fellow  in  front  of  me  that's 
telling  me ;  I  can't  see  a  thing.  .  .  .  Sergeant  Hamil 
ton  Fish.  Know  him  ?  " 

Van  Cleve  shook  his  head.  The  man  went  on : 
"He  says  there's  a  war-correspondent  killed  —  don't 
see  what  a  war-correspondent  was  doing  up  in  front 
on  the  firing-line,  do  you?" 

Van  Cleve  heard  his  own  voice  saying,  "What  was 
that  man's  name?" 

"I  didn't  catch  it  —  wait  a  minute.  .  .  .  Say,  say 
that  over  again,  will  you  ?  Hey  ?  It  was  a  fellow  by 
the  name  of  Marshall.  Friend  of  yours  ?" 

"  No,"  Van  said,  with  almost  as  much  effort  as  before ; 
he  was  trembling  with  relief,  and  at  the  same  time 
adjuring  himself  impatiently  not  to  be  a  fool ;  there 
must  be  a  hundred  correspondents  in  the  field  besides 
Bob. 

"Here,  now  you  can  get  in  and  read  'em  for  yourself, 
if  you're  quick  about  it,"  said  the  other,  good-naturedly, 
squeezing  aside,  as  the  crowd  swayed  open  momentarily. 
Van  Cleve  edged  forward,  and  the  aisle  closed  up  on 
the  instant.  The  two  men  immediately  in  front  of 
him  were  stooping  to  read  the  last  items  at  the  bottom 
of  the  manila-paper  sheet,  one  of  them  copying  rapidly 
into  a  notebook.  Van  craned  over  their  shoulders. 

The  list  of  the  dead  came  first.  He  read  :  " Cort- 

wright,  shot  through  the  heart." 


CHAPTER  III 
KEY  WEST 

THE  triumphant  din  went  on  more  or  less  exuber 
antly  until  the  small  hours  of  that  night  at  Tampa. 
The  news  flashed  to  the  four  corners  of  the  country, 
and  thousands  read  it  next  morning  at  their  comfort 
able  breakfast-tables,  with  unbounded  martial  pride 
and  satisfaction ;  and  numbers  of  honest,  good-tem 
pered  citizens  who  had  never  quarrelled  with  a  neighbor 
in  their  lives,  and  who  sang  lustily  in  church  every 
Sunday  great  words  about  Peace  and  Mercy  and 
Patience  and  Brotherly  Love,  gave  the  children  a 
quarter  to  buy  fire-crackers  with  which  to  celebrate, 
and  went  out  to  their  fields  or  factories  or  offices, 
telling  one  another  it  was  just  what  they  had  expected 
and  predicted  from  the  start,  that  our  men  were  the 
best  all-around  fighters  in  the  world,  invincible  in  open 
battle ;  and  as  for  this  guerilla  style,  why,  they  could 
fairly  eat  the  other  side  up  at  that !  That  was  our  nat 
ural  way  of  fighting  ever  since  the  pioneers  went  into 
business  against  the  Indians  !  And  it  was  a  pity  about 
the  poor  fellows  that  were  killed,  but  war  wasn't  any 
picnic,  we  all  knew  that,  and  so  did  they  when  they 
went  into  it. 

These,  too,  were  the  sort  of  reflections  that  would 
undoubtedly  have  occurred  to  Van  Kendrick,  who 
differed  not  at  all  from  the  average  American  man, 
if  he  had  been  at  his  normal  occupations,  under  normal 
circumstances ;  and  it  is  conceivable  that  he  would 
have  learned  of  the  other  man's  death  had  it  been  an 
ordinary  one  in  bed  after  an  ordinary  illness,  with  no 

215 


216  VAN   CLEVE: 

shock  nor  regret.  But  as  it  was,  he  presented  a  face 
of  such  ghastly  consternation  to  the  two  gentlemen, 
his  acquaintances,  who  were  still  hovering  on  the  edge 
of  the  mob  when  he  pushed  his  way  out  to  them,  that 
they  both  observed  it,  even  by  the  artificial  light,  and 
exclaimed  aloud  with  concern.  Moreover,  when  Van 
Cleve  told  them,  they  were  almost  as  much  shocked  as  he. 

"Good  Lord,  you  say  it's  the  man  Miss  Gilbert's 
engaged  to  ?  The  poor  girl !  Why,  that's  —  that's 
a  dreadful  thing  !"  J.  B.  said  in  horror  and  compassion. 
He  shook  his  head  solemnly.  "  It's  the  women  that  bear 
the  brunt  of  it,  after  all,"  he  said  in  a  lowered  voice, 
thinking  of  his  father  who  had  fallen  gallantly  at  Shiloh, 
of  the  grave  in  the  little  old  Kentucky  churchyard,  and 
his  mother's  face  when  she  went  to  lay  flowers  there. 
"Poor  girl !  Poor  thing  !  Do  you  have  to  go  and  tell 
her  ?  Do  you  think  you'd  better  ?  " 

"It  may  not  be  the  same  man.  It  is  written ' Blangk 
Cortwright,'  I  thingk  you  said?"  the  Japanese  gentle 
man  pointed  out  practically. 

"Yes,  I  know  —  I  thought  about  that.  This  man's 
name  is  Philip,  so  there's  a  chance  still.  There  might 
easily  be  some  other  Cortwright  in  the  regiment.  But 
do  you  suppose  there's  any  way  of  finding  out?"  said 
Van  Cleve,  in  a  haggard  anxiety.  "The  uncertainty 
only  makes  it  worse  for  her,  you  know,"  he  added,  out 
of  his  not  inconsiderable  experience  with  womankind. 

They  all  three  looked  at  one  another  blankly.  "All 
you  can  do  is  to  wait,  I'm  afraid,"  said  J.  B.  at  last. 
As  they  walked  away,  a  sudden  recollection  prompted 
him.  "Cortwright?  Why,  I've  met  him,  haven't  I? 
Oh,  yes,  I  remember  perfectly  now.  I  remember  hear 
ing  about  that  engagement.  I  never  had  -  ''  had  any 
use  for  that  young  man,  Mr.  Taylor  was  on  the  point 
of  saying,  but  checked  himself.  Cortwright  might 
be  dead.  The  same  feeling  restrained  Van  Cleve  even 
from  admitting  to  himself  that  the  fate  of  Lome's  lover 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  217 

was,  personally,  a  matter  of  entire  indifference  to  him  ; 
he  knew  that  at  heart  he  did  not  care  what  became  of 
Cortwright,  one  way  or  the  other ;  but  he  was  des 
perately  sorry  for  Lorrie.  She  thought  Cortwright  was 
a  hero,  poor  girl !  Probably  he  did  not  lack  the  physi 
cal  courage  which  is  the  least  and  commonest  of  man's 
gifts ;  and  if  he  had  borne  himself  well  and  died  doing 
his  duty,  why,  the  best  of  us  could  achieve  no  more  and 
make  no  finer  end. 

Van  Cleve's  own  endowment  did  not  include  any 
thing  like  tactfulness  or  capacity  for  expressing  sym 
pathy,  —  a  fact  of  which  he  was  ruefully  conscious ;  and 
he  carried  this  heavy  news  to  Lorrie  without  the  dim 
mest  idea  of  how  to  "  break  it  gently,"  as  people  say,  to 
her.  Van  thought  —  and  I  am  not  sure,  on  the  whole, 
that  he  was  not  right  —  that  bluntness  might  be  the 
best  mercy.  As  it  happened,  however,  she  had  already 
heard ;  the  plump  nurse  came  out  of  the  room  with 
a  gravely  warning  and  important  carriage,  and  stopped 
Van  Cleve  on  the  threshold. 

"No,  she  didn't  faint,  and  she  hasn't  been  crying  or 
anything,"  she  whispered  in  answer  to  his  questions ; 
"but  she  gave  up  right  away  that  it  was  true.  She 
says  she  doesn't  believe  there  was  another  Cortwright. 
Oh,  Mr.  Kendrick,  isn't  it  awful?"  she  wound  up,  not 
without  some  enjoyment,  in  spite  of  her  real  kindness  of 
heart  and  desire  to  help. 

"Ask  her  if  she'll  see  me,  will  you,  Miss  —  er- 
Van  said.     He  was  wondering  whether  to  tell  Lorrie 
what  he  intended  to  do  next ;  whether,  indeed,  she  would 
be  in  a  fit  state  to  hear  or  consider  his  plans. 

"My  name  isn't  Miss  Urr  —  urr — ,  Mr.  Kendrick, 
I'm  Miss  Crow,"  said  the  nurse,  bridling  a  little  and 
mimicking  him  roguishly;  "I  do  believe  you've  been 
forgetting  it  right  along.  Miss  Crow,  now  do  try  and 
fix  me  in  your  mind." 

"All  right  —  that  is,  I  mean,  I  beg  your  pardon  — 


218  VAN  CLEVE: 

much  obliged/7  said  Van  Cleve,  clumsily,  in  his  preoccu 
pation  ;  at  his  best,  he  would  have  been  a  mortally 
unpromising  subject  for  a  flirtation,  and  now  he  scarcely 
looked  at  the  young  woman,  scarcely  heard  her.  "If 
you'll  just  ask  Miss  Gilbert  if  she  minds  speaking  to 
me  a  minute  —  ?" 

Lorrie  herself  came  to  the  door,  and  stood  before  the 
young  man  with  eyes  that  seemed  very  large  and 
bright  and  of  soundless  depth,  in  her  white  face. 
"Have  you  found  Bob,  Van  Cleve ?"  she  said  quite 
steadily.  "That  is  what  we  must  do,  whatever  comes, 
you  know  that."  Van  Cleve  felt  something  bravely 
self-forgetful  in  her  speech  and  manner  that  touched 
him  more  than  all  the  tears  she  could  have  shed. 

He  took  her  hand.  "I'm  sorry  about  this  —  this 
other  thing  —  this  report,  Lorrie.  But  don't  forget 
it  may  not  be  he.  It  may  be  some  other  man.  I  hope 
to  Heaven  it  is  !"  he  said,  and  meant  the  words.  It 
made  no  difference  who  and  what  and  how  unworthy 
Cortwright  might  be,  all  Van  Cleve's  dislike  and  jeal 
ousy  of  him  were  swept  away  by  an  unselfish  tenderness 
to  see  the  woman  he  loved  so  stricken. 

She  looked  at  him,  tensely  composed,  with  a  kind  of 
distance  in  her  gaze,  as  from  some  far  height ;  it  almost 
frightened  Van  Cleve,  this  spectacle  which  he  had  never 
before  witnessed,  of  the  essential  loneliness  of  sorrow. 
"I  think  it  is  Phil.  I  think  he  is  dead,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  you  oughtn't  to  make  up  your  mind  to  it  that 
way,  Lorrie  —  it's  only  a  report  —  they're  all  the  time 
making  mistakes-  Van  Cleve  began,  awkwardly 
trying  to  reassure  her.  Lorrie  made  a  little  nervous 
gesture  as  of  renunciation,  with  her  two  shaking  hands. 

"If  it  is  so,  it's  for  the  best  —  I  thought  of  that  last 
night  when  I  heard  —  it  would  be  a  noble  way  to  die, 
Van  Cleve  —  it  would  be  the  way  of  his  choice  -  "  she 
said  in  a  pathetic  exaltation,  before  which  the  young 
man  stood  silent  and  somehow  shamed. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  219 

Van  Cleve,  having  by  dint  of  persistent  inquiry  made 
reasonably  sure  that  Bob  had  at  any  rate  left  Tampa, 
now  planned  to  go  on  down  to  Key  West,  as  he  had 
been  repeatedly  advised ;  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
go  to  Cuba  too,  if  need  be,  and  through  the  good  offices 
of  Mr.  Takuhira,  who  was  supplied  with  credentials  or 
some  unknown  instruments  of  power  everywhere,  and 
who  showed  himself  very  active  and  useful,  the  trip 
might  be  arranged.  The  attache  himself  had  received 
orders  from  his  chiefs  to  reach  the  army  or  fleet  before 
Santiago  without  delay ;  everybody  was  expecting 
news  of  a  big  engagement  on  land  or  sea,  perhaps  both, 
at  any  moment.  Lorrie  must  stay  in  Tampa,  Van  de 
cided,  until  she  heard  from  him ;  the  two  nurses,  who 
had  finally  got  themselves  officially  recognized,  would 
look  after  her,  as  far  as  their  duties  allowed ;  at  least 
she  would  not  be  without  a  soul  she  knew  in  the  place. 
They  had  ceased  to  expect  her  to  act  the  part  of  volun 
teer  nurse  with  which  she  had  begun,  and  Van  himself 
had  ceased  to  play  his  own.  It  would  have  been  better 
never  to  have  attempted  that  petty  farce,  he  thought ; 
of  necessity  it  would  sort  ill  with  the  tragedies  of  these 
days,  and  soon  or  late  they  must  abandon  it.  Lorrie 
acquiesced  to  everything  he  said ;  for  the  time  all  the 
spirit  had  gone  out  of  the  girl. 

"Do  you  believe  she'll  ever  get  over  it  ?"  the  younger 
nurse  questioned ;  and  prophesied  that  Miss  Gilbert 
never  would,  recalling  many  instances  of  broken-hearted 
spinsters  who  had  remained  angelically  faithful  to  an 
early  love  to  the  end  of  their  days.  She  was  in  a  fever 
of  romantic  interest,  and  felt  as  if  they  were  "living  in 
one  of  Marie  Corelli's  works,"  as  she  confided  to  her 
senior,  adding  that  she  "wouldn't  have  missed  it  for 
anything !" 

"Oh,  yes,  she'll  get  over  it.  Person  has  to,  you 
know,"  returned  Miss  Rodgers,  who  was  of  an  eminently 
prosaic  temperament.  "I've  seen  a  raft  of  widows  and 


220  VAN  CLEVE: 

widowers  that  were  all  broken  up  right  at  first,  but 
mercy  me,  they  all  got  over  it !  —  except  some  of  the 
real  old  widows,  that  is.  The  men  are  generally  pretty 
chipper  inside  of  a  year.  It's  not  so  awful  when  you 
come  to  think  about  it.  Nobody  can  keep  on  grieving 
right  along  day  in  and  day  out,  forever.  If  they  do, 
you  can  take  it  from  me,  something's  the  matter  with 
'em!" 

"Well,  I  think  Miss  Gilbert's  the  kind  that  would 
be  loyal  to  the  grave.  I  think  it's  lovely,"  said  the 
other,  with  a  sigh.  She  was  at  hand,  accidentally,  of 
course,  when  Van  Cleve  came,  the  next  day,  to  say 
good-by  to  Lorrie;  and  assured  him  earnestly  that 
they  would  take  good  care  of  Miss  Gilbert  —  "She  is 
the  sweetest  thing  !  And  I  hope  we'll  hear  from  you 
soon,  Mr.  Kendrick,"  said  the  girl,  wistfully. 

"Why,  I  hope  so  myself.  And  I  want  to  thank  you 
very  much  for  everything  you're  doing  —  you've  been 
most  kind,  Miss  —  er  —  Miss  Sparrow,"  said  Van, 
warmly,  shaking  her  hand.  He  was  off  without  another 
thought  of  her,  as  she  dismally  knew ;  and  I  believe 
they  have  never  met  since ;  when  Van  Cleve  got  back 
to  Tampa,  Miss  Rodgers  had  been  sent  down  to  Eg- 
mont  Key  to  the  army  hospital  there,  and  he  had  no 
leisure  to  look  up  the  other  young  woman. 

So  now  Mr.  Kendrick  embarked  for  Key  West,  and 
he  did  not  know  how  much  farther.  The  vessel  on 
which  he  and  Takuhira  secured  passage  put  to  sea  in 
the  august  company  of  the  troop-ship  Niagara,  now 
known  as  Transport  No.  16,  with  seven  hundred  men 
aboard  to  reenforce  Shafter  before  Santiago.  And  to 
Van's  surprise,  this  large  body  of  heroes  left  their  na 
tive  shores  without  any  patriotic  or  sentimental  to-do 
whatever,  no  flags,  no  salutes,  no  crowds  of  weeping 
women,  no  band  playing  "The  girl  I  left  behind  me," 
—  nothing  that  even  Van  Cleve 's  workaday  spirit  would 
have  regarded  as  reasonable  and  appropriate.  A  fel- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  221 

low-passenger,  going  down  on  business  connected  with 
furnishing  canned  corned-beef  to  the  government, 
enlightened  him.  "The  good-by-sweetheart  business 
is  about  played-out,"  he  explained.  "You  see  when 
the  order  first  came  for  the  army  to  start,  every 
body  went  piling  down  to  Port  Tampa  and  gave  the 
boys  the  biggest  send-off  they  knew  how.  Well  then, 
the  last  of  the  transports  had  hardly  got  past  the  bell- 
buoys  when  here  came  an  order  for  'em  to  come  back 
home  !  Day  or  so  after  that,  they  tried  it  again.  That 
time  they  only  got  about  three  hundred  yards  down  the 
bay  —  same  old  song-and-dance  !  They  just  settled 
right  down  where  they  were  and  waited.  It  was  two 
or  three  days  after  that,  I  think,  before  they  finally 
did  get  off.  Looked  like  starting  and  stopping  was  a 
kind  of  habit  with  'em  —  '  Farewell  forever  —  forever 
farewell ! '  as  the  song  says.  Only  people  get  tired 
farewelling,  you  know;  they  can't  keep  it  up  that 
long.  Once  is  enough  ;  it  don't  seem  to  have  any  point 
the  second  time.  You  can't  get  a  rise  out  of  anybody 
nowadays." 

It  was  a  fact  that  Van  Cleve  himself  began  to  feel, 
as  it  were,  callous  to  further  excitement ;  he  had  had 
enough  of  the  alarums  and  excursions,  the  sight  of 
fighting-men  and  armaments.  Transport  No.  16,  which 
had  no  time  to  spare,  shortly  left  them  behind,  but 
the  waters  were  full  of  other  shipping,  which  Van  barely 
noticed.  There  were  moments  when  the  whole  ad 
venture  seemed  to  the  young  man's  naturally  slow  and 
cool  judgment  absolutely  insane.  What  was  he,  Van 
Cleve  Kendrick,  doing  in  this  outlandish  environment  ? 
Why,  he  was  going  a-knight-erranting,  to  be  sure  — 
knight-erranting  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
on  a  little  steamer  with  a  ridiculous  comic-opera  name, 
crowded  with  men,  tumbling  about  under  the  red-hot 
sky,  with  the  gulls  squeaking  in  their  rear,  and  the  low 
coasts  of  Florida  simmering  there  ten  miles  off  !  And 


222  VAN   CLEVE: 

here,  for  a  final  incongruity,  was  a  polite  Oriental  (in  a 
straw  hat  and  beautifully  polished  shoes  !)  at  his  elbow 
proffering  him  a  cigar  !  He  took  the  cigar ;  he  smoked 
and  talked  with  the  other  men  sitting  in  the  narrow 
shade  of  the  deck-house  with  their  feet  propped  on  the 
extra  chairs.  He  might  have  been  travelling  down  to 
see  about  tobacco  contracts  or  canned  corned-beef  for 
the  army  like  the  rest  of  them,  for  all  the  excitement  he 
showed  or,  indeed,  felt ;  the  commonplace  attitude  of 
his  mind  sometimes  puzzled  him.  Once  he  overheard 
one  of  the  commercial  gentlemen  attempting  to  beguile 
Mr.  Takuhira,  in  whom  he  probably  fancied  he  discerned 
the  well-known  simplicity  of  foreigners,  with  a  garbled 
version  of  M.  Jules  Verne's  "Trip  to  the  Moon/'  the 
scene  of  which  is  laid  in  Tampa,  and  which  the  narrator 
solemnly  averred  to  be  true.  .  .  .  "They  sank  a  whale 
of  a  great  big  gun  straight  down  into  the  ground  so  as 
to  aim  square  up  at  the  moon.  And  then  they  had  a 
regular  shell  made,  only  hollow  and  big  enough  inside 
to  hold  the  three  men,  and  they  fitted  it  all  up  with 
beds,  and  stuff  to  eat  and  drink,  of  course,  and  they  all 
got  in  there,  and  had  a  tremendous  charge  of  dynamite 
or  something  put  in  the  gun,  and  got  somebody  outside 
to  touch  her  off  with  an  electric  wire,  and  started  up 
towards  the  moon,  same  as  you  would  fire  off  any  shell. 
Fact !  Why,  they  show  you  the  place  where  the  gun 
was,  right  outside  the  city;  it's  a  regulation  trip  for 
sightseers.  I'm  surprised  you  didn't  take  that  in 
while  you  were  there  — 

"He  isn't  taking  it  in  now,"  said  Van  Cleve,  in  his 
unpleasant  voice. 

"I  have  read  thee  story  —  in  French  which  I  read. 
It  is  a  very  good  story.  You  tell  it  very  ouell,  sir/' 
said  Takuhira,  who  had  listened  with  the  utmost  civil 
interest ;  and  for  some  reason  the  other  rose  up  with  a 
violently  flushed  countenance  and  walked  away  in  a 
hurry,  followed  by  a  short  bark  of  laughter  from  Mr. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  223 

Kendrick,  who  enjoyed  the  defeat  much  more  than  the 
victor  himself,  not  a  muscle  of  whose  ivory-brown  face 
had  moved.  Van  liked  the  little  Japanese.  He  him 
self  remembered  the  trip-to-the-moon  story ;  it  was  one 
of  the  books  he  had  read  with  Bob  Gilbert  that  summer 
at  Put-in-Bay  ten  years  ago.  He  thought  of  the  two 
boys  with  a  brief  sigh ;  look  at  Bob  now.  Well,  look 
at  Bob,  and  what  of  it  ?  Doubts  thrust  themselves 
upon  his  mind,  as  they  had  more  than  once  before ;  and 
again  he  tried  to  realize  the  present,  and  his  task. 

Twenty-four  hours  brought  them  to  Key  West,  on  a 
hot,  noisy  morning ;  and  in  the  paper  Van  Cleve 
bought  on  the  dock  he  found  a  final  report  of  the  fight 
at  Las  Guasimas,  much  enlarged,  with  a  complete  and 
verified  list  of  killed  and  wounded.  Among  the  former, 
"  Troop  X,  Lieut.  Philip  Cortwright"  appeared  half 
way  down  the  page.  So  poor  Lorrie  was  right  in  her 
sad  presentiment ;  and  she  too  must  have  seen  this 
last  despatch  by  now.  Van  read  the  account  of  the 
battle.  It  did  not  seem  to  have  been  very  spectacu 
lar  ;  no  charging  up  to  breastworks,  or  hand-to-hand 
struggle.  Our  advance  had  been  through  a  practi 
cally  pathless  jungle ;  the  Spanish  used  smokeless  pow 
der  so  that  it  was  almost  impossible  to  locate  them  - 
this  statement  was  repeated  continually  with  a  child 
like  surprise  and  indignation  ;  also  their  sharpshooting 
was  very  good ;  they  had  men  posted  in  the  trees ;  it 
had  been  no  such  slight  skirmish  as  at  first  reported. 
The  LTnited  States  troops  had  behaved  with  the  great 
est  firmness  and  daring,  as  indeed  the  tale  of  losses 
showed  ;  owing  to  the  scattering  nature  of  the  fighting, 
it  was  not  until  after  some  time  and  search  that  it  had 
been  possible  to  get  an  accurate  list  of  the  casualties. 
Lieutenant  Cortwright  had  pressed  forward  very 
eagerly  and  was  one  of  the  first  to  fall  with  a  bullet 
through  the  lungs  (not  the  heart  as  previously 
stated) ;  he  died  while  being  carried  to  the  rear.  Mr. 


224  VAN  CLEVE: 

Marshall,  the  correspondent,  had  not  been  killed,  but 
so  severely  wounded  that  his  recovery  was  improbable. 
In  another  column  was  the  statement  that  all  the  bodies 
found  had  been  buried  on  the  field  and  could  not  be 
removed  until  after  the  close  of  the  war  —  if  even  then. 
The  graves  were  marked,  and  whatever  small  posses 
sions  of  the  dead  men  seemed  worth  while,  had  been 
taken  charge  of,  in  most  cases,  by  some  friend  or 
"bunkie."  "Poor  Lorrie  !"  said  Van  to  himself  again. 
And,  "This  is  a  strange  trick  of  Fate  !"  he  thought,  not 
without  some  bitterness  in  his  wonder ;  "if  Cortwright 
had  lived  and  they  had  been  married,  it's  ten  to  one 
he'd  have  made  her  miserable.  Here  he's  died  decently 
and  like  a  man,  and  Lorrie  will  revere  his  memory  for 
a  hero  and  a  martyr  to  the  end  of  her  days  !" 

If  Tampa  had  been  in  a  seething  hubbub,  it  was 
nothing  to  Key  West,  which  felt  itself  in  all  but  halloo 
ing  distance  of  the  seat  of  war,  and,  in  the  mediaeval 
phrase,  stood  within  the  Spanish  danger;  the  little 
town  of  foreign-looking  houses  and  brilliant  tropical 
shrubbery  among  which  one  might  recognize  many  old 
friends  of  the  conservatory  uncannily  grown  and  nat 
uralized,  was  incredibly  crowded ;  the  hot  white 
streets  swarmed  with  people ;  the  harbor  was  jammed 
with  shipping ;  the  quays  in  a  roaring  turmoil.  Some 
body  pointed  out  to  Van  Cleve  the  Spanish  prizes 
anchored  here  and  there,  a  piebald  collection  of  steam 
and  sailing  vessels,  and  told  him  they  were  to  be  auc 
tioned  off  at  public  outcry  that  very  morning.  "Some 
of  'em  ought  to  go  cheap,  by  their  looks,"  said  Van,  and 
the  other  man  laughed.  In  truth,  they  were  a  dirty 
and  down-at-heel  set.  The  transport  had  touched 
five  hours  earlier,  and  gone  on  without  delay ;  another 
big  liner  now  in  the  government  hire  was  just  stand 
ing  out  to  sea,  loaded  with  supplies  and  the  army  mail, 
as  Van  was  informed.  Every  one  was  eager  to  talk 
and  answer  all  his  questions,  the  young  fellow  found ; 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  225 

there  was  the  same  extraordinary  feeling  of  kinship  and 
ready-made  acquaintance  in  the  crowds  which  he  had 
noticed  in  Tampa. 

In  the  meanwhile,  Mr.  Takuhira  had  entered  upon 
what  promised  to  be  a  difficult  and  complicated  nego 
tiation  with  the  authorities  over  his  passage  to  Cuba, 
which  it  appeared  even  the  accredited  representative 
of  a  foreign  power  could  not  accomplish  without  the 
consent  or  connivance  of  every  official  in  the  place,  and 
a  truly  bewildering  display  of  red  tape.  Van  Cleve 
left  him  at  the  beginning  of  it,  and  took  his  own  way 
to  the  office  of  the  Key  West  Sentinel;  he  could 
think  of  no  better  starting-point  for  his  haphazard 
search,  and  here,  for  once,  Chance  befriended  him. 

The  Sentinel  was  housed  and  served  in  much  the 
same  style  as  the  Tampa  newspapers ;  it  might  have 
been  the  same  flimsy  wooden  building,  the  same  clut 
tered  little  office-room,  opening  full  on  the  street,  with 
a  white  awning  over  the  door,  and  a  manila-paper 
broadside  with  "  LATEST  NEWS  FROM  THE  SEAT  OF 
WAR,"  skewered  on  the  lamp-post  opposite.  The 
same  crowd  jostled  in  and  out ;  the  same  men  chewing 
unlighted  cigars,  perspiring  in  shirt-sleeves  with  hand 
kerchiefs  tucked  inside  their  collars,  hammered  on  the 
typewriters,  or  dictated  to  other  hammerers.  As  Van 
had  more  than  half  expected,  nobody  knew  anything 
about  a  Robert  Gilbert,  or  had  ever  heard  of  him,  or 
had  any  time  to  listen  to  or  answer  questions  about 
war-correspondents.  He  was  turning  away  when  there 
came  in  a  thin,  slow-moving  man  dressed  in  soiled 
white  ducks,  with  a  thin,  yellow,  scrubby-bearded  and 
inexpressibly  tired  face,  who  took  off  his  hat  and  wiped 
his  forehead  with  a  languid  gesture,  as  he  leaned  against 
one  of  the  tables,  and  asked  if  there  was  any  mail  for 
him.  Van  Cleve,  who  could  not  get  by  in  the  higgledy- 
piggledy  little  place  without  dislodging  him,  hesitated 
an  instant,  wondering  with  that  slight  inward  recoil 
Q 


226  VAN   CLEVE: 

which  most  people  would  have  felt  at  this  date  if  the 
other  might  not  be  just  coming  out  of  an  attack  of  the 
fever ;  he  had  plainly  been  very  sick  recently  —  was 
sick  still,  for  that  matter.  The  typewriter-girl  recog 
nized  him,  and  got  up  to  search  a  pigeonhole  in  the 
desk  alongside  her.  "You  don't  look  very  good  yet, 
Mr.  Schreiber,"  she  said  kindly;  "I  don't  believe 
you  ought  to  be  out  in  the  sun.  It  brings  it  on  again 
sometimes." 

"Oh,  I've  had  my  dose,"  said  the  visitor,  with  a  kind 
of  haggard  jauntiness ;  he  was  a  young  fellow,  about 
Van's  own  age.  "Anyway,  you  might  as  well  be  good 
and  sick  as  half  up  and  half  down  this  way.  It's  more 
interesting.  Isn't  that  mine?" 

She  handed  him  a  yellow  envelope  with  Gulf 
States  Monthly  printed  in  the  corner  of  it,  remarking 
amiably,  "Say,  that's  a  dandy  good  magazine.  I  buy 
a  number  every  now  and  then  —  only  ten  cents,  you 
know,  and  I  can't  see  but  what  it's  got  every  bit  as 
good  stuff  in  as  Century  or  any  of  the  high-up  ones. 
Are  you  going  to  have  something  in  pretty  soon  ?" 

"I  sent  'em  an  article  and  some  photographs  just 
before  I  was  taken  sick  —  don't  know  when  they'll 
be  out,  of  course,  but  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  it  was  in  the 
next  issue.  They  want  all  their  war  news  to  be  right 
up  to  the  minute,"  he  said  not  without  some  impor 
tance  ;  and  added  in  a  slightly  lowered  and  confidential 
tone  ;  "want  a  news  item  ?  For  the  society  column  ? " 

"Sure  we  do.     Always.     What  is  it  ?" 

"Well  then,"  said  the  convalescent,  unsmiling,  with 
ironic  impressiveness,  "you  may  just  say  that  I  leave 
for  Cuba  to-night  or  early  to-morrow  morning  on  my 
private  yacht,  the  Milton  D.  Bowers,  which  is  now  coal 
ing  up  and  laying  in  a  store  of  provisions,  wines,  etc., 
my  special  extra  dry  champagne,  and  my  own  brand 
of  cigars,  at  Wharf  8,  foot  of  Cadoodle  Street,  or  what 
ever  the  name  of  it  is,  down  here  three  squares  to  the 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  227 

right,  I  mean.  Now  don't  make  any  mistake  ;  I  don't 
want  to  have  that  telegraphed  all  over  the  country 
with  my  name  spelled  wrong.  I'd  nevah  be  able  to 
show  my  face  in  Newport  or  Tuxedo  again,  don't  you 
know,  they'd  all  make  so  much  fun  of  me.  Beastly 
bore,  don't  you  know  !" 

The  stenographer  did  not  laugh,  however.  "  Oh,  my, 
Mr.  Schreiber,  you  ain't  honestly  going,  are  you?" 
she  said  with  concern.  "Why,  you  ain't  near  well 
enough  yet.  I  think  that's  awful  reckless." 

Van  Cleve  did  not  hear  her  remonstrances ;  he  was 
busy  trying  to  remember  where  he  had  heard  before  of 
the  Milton  D.  Bowers;  it  must  be  the  same  vessel,  for 
no  two  that  ever  sailed  the  seas  would  have  been  christ 
ened  with  such  a  name.  Suddenly  he  recollected.  He 
spoke  to  the  other  young  man  abruptly.  "I  beg  par 
don,  are  you  one  of  the  war-correspondents?" 

At  this  unexpected  attack,  the  stenographer  jumped 
with  a  little  scream ;  Mr.  Schreiber  faced  about  with 
his  fatigued  movements,  bracing  himself  by  the  desk, 
and  eyed  Van  Cleve  inquiringly,  a  species  of  jocular 
hostility  or  wariness  showing  on  his  fever-stricken, 
youthful  face. 

"Yes,  I'm  a  correspondent.  Aren't  you  the  speedy 
little  guesser,  though!"  he  said  lightly,  still  with  an 
indescribable  air  of  being  on  his  guard. 

"I  heard  you  mention  the  Milton  D.  Bowers.  That's 
one  of  the  newspaper-boats,  isn't  it?"  Van  pursued. 

"Yes."  And  before  Van  Cleve  could  open  his  mouth 
for  his  next  question,  the  other  stuck  out  a  hand  and, 
grabbing  Van's,  pumped  it  up  and  down  with  exag 
gerated  warmth,  exclaiming:  "WHY,  if  it  isn't  my 
dear  old  friend  Chauncey  Pipp  from  Hayville,  Michi 
gan !  Howdo,  Chauncey?  How's  the  folks?" 

It  took  Van  Cleve  a  moment  or  two  to  perceive  what 
this  fantastic  performance  implied.  When  he  did,  he 
frowned.  "Oh,  come  off  !  Do  I  look  like  a  green  goods 


228  VAN   CLEVE: 

man?"  he  said  impatiently.  "I  just  want  to  ask  you 
something.  I'm  looking  for  a  man  that's  been  on  that 
boat  —  a  correspondent,  you  understand.  I  thought 
you  might  have  met.  His  name's  Gilbert  —  R.  D. 
Gilbert." 

Mr.  Schreiber  became  another  man  on  the  instant ; 
he  relinquished  Van  Cleve's  hand,  entirely  business 
like  and  serious.  "Why,  yes,  I  know  a  Gilbert.  We 
were  on  a  cruise  together  on  the  Milton  D.  We  got  to 
knowing  each  other  very  well,"  he  said,  interested ; 
"I  don't  know  what  his  first  name  was,  though  ;  I  never 
happened  to  ask  him.  What's  your  Gilbert  like? 
Tall,  light-haired  fellow?  This  one  was  reporting  for 
a  Cleveland  paper,  I  think." 

"No,  Cincinnati.     My  man  is  from  Cincinnati." 

"Well,  maybe  it  was  Cincinnati  —  I  don't  recollect 
—  it  was  Ohio,  anyhow.  You  say  you're  looking  for 
him?" 

"Yes.  It  must  be  the  same  man.  He-  Van 
Cleve  stopped  himself,  glancing  at  the  stenographer, 
who  was  an  open-eyed  spectator.  "Here,  let's  go  out 
side  and  talk.  We're  in  the  way  here,"  he  suggested. 

"Well,  I  call  that  a  funny  coincidence  !"  the  young 
lady  ejaculated  as  they  left. 

Outside,  in  chairs  under  another  awning  in  front  of 
the  saloon  across  the  way,  Schreiber  said,  "You  aren't 
a  brother  of  Gilbert's,  are  you?" 

"No,  just  a  friend  of  his  and  the  family's.  The 
man  I  mean  is  a  heavy  drinker.  You'd  know  it 
even  if  he  kept  sober  while  he  was  down  here,"  said 
Van  Cleve,  bluntly.  "I  didn't  want  to  talk  about  it 
before  that  girl.  You  saw  that." 

"Yes,  that's  the  same  Gilbert,"  Schreiber  said  at 
once ;  "he's  all  right,  if  it  wasn't  for  that.  Good  fellow, 
if  it  wasn't  for  that.  Just  can't  let  it  alone,  that's  all. 
I  don't  mind  a  man  taking  a  drink  once  in  a  while  — 
Here  now,  don't  do  that,  that  wasn't  a  hint;  I  couldn't 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  229 

take  anything  but  mineral  water,  anyhow  —  I  say  I 
don't  mind  a  man  taking  a  drink  once  in  a  while,  but 
Gilbert  — !"  he  made  a  gesture  —  "he  just  can't  let 
it  alone.  Were  you  expecting  to  meet  him  here?" 

Van  Cleve  explained.  "I've  been  looking  for  him 
for  a  week.  His  paper  has  let  him  go,  and  the  family 
want  him  to  come  home.  They  don't  know  where 
he  is,  nor  what's  happening  to  him." 

The  newspaper-man  nodded  with  full  comprehension 
of  what  these  statements  left  unsaid.  "Well  —  all 
right,  apollinaris  —  I'm  afraid  you're  going  to  have 
a  hard  time  finding  him  because  the  last  I  knew  he 
was  going  to  Cuba.  I  had  it  all  fixed  to  go  myself, 
only  I  came  down  with  this  blankety-blanked  fever 
instead  !" 

"Yellow?" 

"No,  it's  what  they  call  calenture.  It's  nothing 
like  so  serious  as  yellow,  but  you  certainly  do  feel  rotten 
after  it.  What  day  of  the  month  is  it,  do  you  know? 
I've  lost  count  —  one  day's  so  much  like  another  when 
you're  sick." 

Van  Cleve  himself  had  forgotten,  and  was  obliged 
to  refer  to  the  Sentinel,  which  he  was  still  carrying 
in  his  pocket.  It  was  the  30th  of  June.  "Three 
weeks  since  I  began  to  feel  so  bum  I  had  to  go  to  bed  ! 
The  army  left  the  next  day,"  said  Schreiber,  dolefully. 
"However  — !"  He  shrugged  away  his  disappoint 
ment  with  one  shoulder.  "We've  all  got  to  take  what's 
coming  to  us.  I  will  now  proceed  to  drown  my  woes 
in  drink!"  he  announced,  reverting  to  his  attitude  of 
defiant  levity,  and  took  up  the  mild  tumbler  of  mineral 
water  with  a  flourish.  "Here's  your  good  health, 
Mr.  —  ?" 

"Kendrick  —  my  name's  Kendrick."  Van  Cleve 
got  out  a  card  and  gave  it  to  him,  with  a  word  of  half- 
humorous  apology.  "I  suppose  you're  used  to  a  lot 
of  wild-eyed  cranks  butting  in  on  you  the  way  I  did, 


230  VAN  CLEVE: 

though.  Isn't  that  so?  Newspaper-men  have  the 
name  of  being  ready  for  almost  anything." 

"Well,  I  don't  call  it  particularly  the  act  of  a  wild- 
eyed  crank  to  take  me  out  and  buy  me  a  drink,"  said 
the  other,  good-naturedly.  He  looked  at  the  card  and 
read  aloud:  uMr.  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,"  and  repeated 
his  toast :  "Here's  looking  towards  you,  Mr.  Kendrick. 
I  haven't  got  any  cards  with  me,  or  I'd  exchange  with 
you.  My  name's  Schreiber,  however  —  if  you'll  take 
my  word  for  it  —  and  I'm  here  for  the  Gulf  States  Maga 
zine  partly,  and  partly  on  my  own.  If  there's  anything 
I  can  do  for  you,  I'd  be  glad  to." 

Van  said  that  he  was  much  obliged ;  and  they  finished 
one  his  apollinaris,  the  other  his  Baccardi  rum  in  ex 
traordinary  amity.  It  was  a  great  place  and  time  for 
these  hit-or-miss  fellowships. 

"Funny  you  should  happen  to  ask  me  about  Gilbert," 
the  correspondent  commented;  " — no,  thanks,  I 
can't  smoke  yet.  Oh,  wait  till  you  have  calenture  — 
you'll  understand  !  —  I  say  it's  funny  you  should  have 
picked  out  me  to  ask  about  Gilbert,  because  I'm  prob 
ably  the  one,  single,  solitary  man  in  the  whole  place 
that  could  tell  you  !" 

Van  Cleve  explained  about  the  Milton  D.  Bowers. 
"If  I  hadn't  heard  you  say  that,  I'd  have  gone  on 
without  speaking.  But  I  just  happened  to  remember 
Bob  —  Gilbert,  you  know  —  mentioning  that  as  the 
name  of  the  despatch-boat  he'd  been  on,  in  one  of  his 
letters  home.  It's  an  absurd  sort  of  name  and  stuck  in 
my  head  on  that  account,  no  doubt." 

"It  is  a  queer  name,  I  suppose,"  said  Schreiber,  re 
flectively;  "I  don't  know  why,  I  never  noticed  that  it 
was  queer  before.  Yes,  Gilbert  and  I  were  on  the 
Milton  D.  together.  It  was  an  interesting  cruise. 
She  isn't  a  despatch-boat,  however;  the  despatch- 
boats  have  these  big,  high-powered  engines,  and  they 
get  over  the  ground,  or  the  sea  rather,  like  an  express- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  231 

train.     The  Milton  D.'s  nothing  but  a  sea-going  tug  - 
kind  of  a  little  bull-tug,  you  know,  very  stout  and 
strong,  but  not  at  all  fast.     She  could  get  along  well 
enough  to  keep  up  with  the  transports,  and  that's  all 
that's  necessary." 

"Is  that  so?     How  long  were  you  on  that  trip?" 

"Why,  a  week  or  more.  We  went  down  by  the  Isle 
of  Pines,  keeping  out  a  good  way  from  Havana  on  ac 
count  of  the  fleet,  you  know.  And  then  we  came 
around  by  the  east  end  of  Cuba.  We  must  have  been 
very  near  where  the  army  landed  the  other  day.  It's 
a  wonderful  coast,  tall  cliffs  right  to  the  edge  of  the  sea, 
no  beach  at  all,  and  a  whacking  big  surf  piling  up  all 
around  the  bases  of  'em.  The  mountains  are  all  over 
thick  woods,  and  every  now  and  then  you  can  see  a 
little  white  streak  of  a  waterfall  tottering  out  like  a 
ghost  between  them.  The  sea's  almost  always  very 
blue,  and  the  surf's  white,  and  the  mountains  deep 
green  —  George!"  he  shook  his  head  in  admiration; 
"it's  beautiful,  only  it  doesn't  look  real,  somehow.  It 
makes  you  think  of  a  drop-curtain." 

"Must  have  been  a  great  sight,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
with  full  appreciation.  "I  didn't  think  you'd  have 
time  to  look  at  scenery,  on  account  of  dodging  Spanish 
gunboats  and  so  on." 

Schreiber  laughed.  "Spanish  gunboats  never  both 
ered  us.  We  had  to  keep  on  the  hop  to  dodge  our  own. 
They'd  have  eaten  us  up  in  a  minute."  And  seeing 
the  incredulity  on  Van's  face,  he  added  with  emphasis : 
"Yes,  they  would.  The  fleet's  not  a  very  safe  neigh 
borhood  for  little  Milton  D.  Bowerses,  or  any  other 
non-combatants.  They  don't  know  who  you  are,  and 
they  can't  risk  stopping  to  find  out.  Shoot  first 
and  explain  afterwards  —  that's  their  motto  !  Those 
big  warships  just  loaf  around  the  ocean  all  night 
long  without  a  sound  or  a  light,  and  if  they  run 
across  you  —  Bing  !  Dead  bird  !  They  have  to,  you 


232  VAN  CLEVE: 

know.  You  might  be  a  torpedo-boat  sneaking  up 
on  'em." 

Van  Cleve  pondered  this  information  with  a  certain 
stirring  of  the  adventurous  longings  he  had  had  in  boy 
hood,  and  had  thought  long  since  dead  and  buried. 
What  St.  Louis  soap-factory,  what  distillery,  what 
office-stool  and  desk,  might  be  their  tombstone  !  With 
something  of  an  effort,  he  got  back  to  the  business  of 
the  hour. 

"You  say  you  think  Gilbert  went  to  Cuba  when  the 
troops  did?" 

"Oh,  yes,  positive.  They  all  went.  Everybody 
went  but  me." 

"How  did  they  get  there  —  the  newspaper-men,  I 
mean  ?  Did  they  have  their  own  boat  ?  " 

"Well,  yes,  some  of  them.  Some  were  on  the  Asso 
ciated  Press  boats,  the  Goldenrod  and  the  Wanda  and 
the  others  —  you've  probably  seen  their  names  in  the 
papers.  There  were  a  good  many  on  one  of  the  trans 
ports.  You  can  get  to  Cuba  any  old  way;  it's 
easier  than  going  from  here  to  New  York  !  I  was  to 
have  been  on  the  Milton  D.,  but  of  course  that  all  had 
to  be  put  off.  They  took  the  route  by  the  north  coast, 
and  the  Milton  D.  could  do  that  nicely.  It's  shorter, 
and  doesn't  take  so  much  coal.  Coal's  a  very  serious 
item  with  these  little  tin  tea-pots." 

Van  Cleve  surveyed  him  thoughtfully.  "Were  you 
in  earnest  just  now  when  you  were  talking  about  going 
to-night?" 

The  other  nodded.  "Of  course  I  was  in  earnest  — 
of  course  I'm  going.  What  made  you  ask?" 

"Why,  you're  too  sick  still,  aren't  you?" 

"Oh,  sick  —  thunder!"  said  Schreiber,  in  genuine 
irritation.  "No,  I'm  not  sick  any  more.  I'll  be  all 
right  in  a  day  or  two,  anyhow.  Besides,  I  can't  stay 
loafing  here.  There's  something  doing  every  minute 
over  there,  and  I  don't  want  to  miss  any  more  of  it. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  233 

The  war  isn't  going  to  last  forever,  you  know  —  a  few 
months,  or  a  year  maybe,  and  we  may  never  have  an 
other,  not  in  our  time,  anyway.  If  you  knew  anything 
about  the  newspaper  game,  you'd  know  a  person  can't 
worry  around  over  every  little  pain  and  ache,  when  he 
might  be  out  getting  a  good  story." 

He  spoke  with  a  vehemence  for  which  Van  Cleve,  who 
was  not  given  to  vehemence  or  excitement  himself, 
rather  warmed  to  him ;  Van  thought  it  might  be  fool 
ish  and  exaggerated,  but  it  showed  at  least  the  proper 
spirit  with  which  any  man  ought  to  regard  his  work. 
"If  everybody  felt  that  way  about  their  job,  there'd 
be  a  good  deal  more  done,  Mr.  Schreiber,"  he  said; 
"the  reason  I  asked  you,  though,  was  that  I  was 
wondering  if  I  could  make  an  arrangement  to  go  with 
you.  Would  there  be  room  on  the  Milton  D.  Bowers 
for  one  more?" 

Schreiber  stared.  "  You  want  to  go  to  Cuba  ?  Why, 
look  here,  are  you  in  the  newspaper  business  after  all  ?  " 
he  asked  ingenuously. 

"No,  I  just  thought  I'd  like  to  go  if  I  got  the  chance. 
I'd  like  to  see  it.  If  we  should  happen  to  run  across 
Gilbert,  I'd  get  him  to  come  back  with  me,"  said  Van 
Cleve,  in  as  casual  a  manner  as  he  could  put  on ;  it 
was  not  well  done,  for  he  had  no  talent  for  that  sort 
of  deception,  but  Schreiber  noticed  nothing. 


CHAPTER  IV 
ONCE  ABOARD  THE  LUGGER  ! 

THE  correspondent's  full  name  was  Herman  Schrei- 
ber,  and  he  came  originally  from  Blucher,  Illinois,  as  he 
informed  Van  Cleve  in  the  course  of  the  negotiations, 
adding  with  extreme  seriousness  that  he  was  of  Irish 
descent.  Although  he  knew  nothing  of  Mr.  Ken- 
drick's  character  and  antecedents,  he  made  no  difficulty 
about  accepting  him  for  a  companion  on  the  voyage. 
It  is  a  long  way  from  Blucher,  Illinois,  to  the  coast  of 
Bohemia,  and  very  likely  on  that  journey  and  since 
dwelling  in  the  last-named  locality,  Herman  had  fallen 
in  with  much  queerer  and  more  questionable  associates. 
"  Why,  if  you  want  to  go,  I'm  sure  it's  all  right  as  far 
as  Fm  concerned,"  he  said  with  genial  indifference. 
"  You'll  have  to  speak  to  Captain  Bowers,  but  I  don't 
believe  he'll  object,  provided  you  can  rustle  the  price. 
He's  a  Yankee ;  comes  from  New  Bedford,  or  Glouces 
ter,  or  somewhere  down  east,  and  he's  about  as  mellow 
as  a  salt  cod.  Of  course,  it'll  be  rough ;  you  don't 
need  to  be  told  that.  But  if  you  don't  mind  sleeping 
with  a  lump  of  coal  in  your  ear,  and  eating  hardtack 
and  canned  stuff,  and  going  without  a  shave  or  clean 
clothes  for  a  while,  why,  it's  a  good  deal  of  fun.  The 
thing  is,  you  see  it  all,  you  know.  That's  the  thing, 
you  see  it  all!" 

He  went  back  to  the  hotel  —  Key  West  has,  or  had 
at  that  date,  but  one  —  with  Van  Cleve,  and  there  the 
first  person  they  encountered  was  Mr.  Takuhira,  whom 
the  journalist  already  knew,  and  saluted  as  Take-your- 
hair-off,  in  a  cheerfully  informal  style.  Takuhira' s 

234 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  235 

own  prospects,  as  he  told  them  with  his  equable  smile, 
were  very  dubious.  "I  should  have  gone  by  thee  mail- 
boat  that  left  this  morning.  Arrangements  had  been 
made,  they  say,"  he  said  and  permitted  himself  a  slight 
shrug.  "Unfortunately  they  omitted  one  rather  de 
sirable  arrangement,  that  is,  to  tell  me.  I  did  not 
know  anything  about  it.  And  now  nobody  knows 
anything  about  me.  The  government  of  Uncle  Sam 
has  troubles  of  his  own,  as  you  say,  without  to  bother 
about  one  Japan  attache" 

"D'ye  have  to  get  there?"  said  Schreiber.  The 
Oriental  gentleman  shrugged  again.  The  other  two 
men  could  not  help  exchanging  a  glance,  each  one  won 
dering  and  knowing  that  the  other  was  wondering 
whether  this  Japanese  would  not  be  quite  capable  of 
committing  harakiri  to  satisfy  his  fanatical  Eastern 
standards  of  honor,  if  he  failed  in  his  mission.  Al 
most  simultaneously  they  proposed  to  him  their  own 
vessel  as  a  way  out  of  his  difficulties. 

"  And  he  won't  be  the  funniest  traveller  the  old  tub's 
carried,  either,"  Schreiber  said,  after  they  had,  all  three, 
completed  the  bargain  with  Captain  Bowers,  who  had 
been  willing  enough  to  take  Van  Cleve,  but  inquired 
a  little  austerely  why  it  was  necessary  to  ship  the 
chink?  He  was  won  over,  however,  by  an  argument 
which  Schreiber  assured  the  others  in  private  was  al 
ways  irresistible  with  him  ;  give  Captain  Bowers  enough 
(he  said)  and  he'd  sail  his  namesake  to  a  very  much 
warmer  place  than  Cuba  —  which  Mr.  Schreiber  speci 
fied.  And  he  hinted  at  a  sinister  past,  and  at  various 
desperate  exploits  of  the  captain's  in  the  way  of  block 
ade-running  during  the  Civil  War,  filibustering  in  the 
Caribbean,  and  so  on,  which  Van  Cleve  inwardly  de 
cided  to  discount  a  trifle.  Captain  Bowers  was  a  lean, 
leathery,  hard-featured  man  upwards  of  sixty,  who, 
indeed,  looked  quite  capable  of  the  dark  deeds  attrib 
uted  to  him ;  at  some  stage  of  his  career,  he  had  lost 


236  VAN  CLEVE: 

two  fingers  off  his  right  hand,  which,  some  way  or  other, 
strengthened  the  grim  impression.  But  Van  was 
shrewd  enough  to  know  that  to  the  landsman  the  sea 
and  those  who  follow  it  will  always  be  a  mystery  attrac 
tive  and  forbidding  in  the  same  breath ;  pirate  or 
preacher,  the  captain  would  probably  have  looked  the 
same  to  him,  he  thought,  with  a  laugh ;  and  what  dif 
ference  did  it  make,  anyhow  ? 

Their  craft,  Captain  Bowers  announced,  would  sail 
at  midnight,  a  choice  of  hours  which,  of  itself,  savored 
of  deep-sea  secrecy  and  danger,  but  which,  Van  Cleve 
vaguely  supposed,  had  something  to  do  with  the  tide. 
It  left  them  all  the  rest  of  the  day  for  preparation,  but 
somehow  Van  never  can  remember  nowadays  exactly 
how  he  spent  that  time.  He  wrote  to  his  Aunt  Myra 
and  to  the  bank,  and  a  long  letter  to  Lorrie.  Takuhira 
was  writing,  too,  on  the  other  side  of  the  desk  in 
the  hotel  lounging-room,  filling  page  after  page  with 
Japanese  characters,  with  what  might  be  called  an 
unnaturally  natural  rapidity,  as  facile  as  Van  him 
self.  The  latter  wondered  whether  their  letters  might 
not  be  a  good  deal  alike.  There  they  sat,  each  one  a 
parcel  of  memories  and  associations  as  different  as 
possible,  yet  doubtless  fundamentally  the  same.  Some 
slant-eyed  little  lady  in  a  sash  might  be  Takuhira's 
Lorrie ;  and  instead  of  Van's  great,  muddy  river,  and 
bricked,  noisy,  sooty,  well-loved  town,  the  Japanese 
must  be  calling  up  some  fantastic  vista  of  bamboos, 
cock-roofed  temples,  and  rice-fields,  and  naming  it,  with 
as  strong  a  feeling,  home. 

Afterwards,  to  the  best  of  Van's  recollection,  they 
went  together  and  got  some  express  checks  cashed, 
and  visited  a  shop  where  they  bought  apparel  which 
they  dimly  conjectured  to  be  suitable  for  the  trip  — 
flannel  shirts,  canvas  shoes,  a  blanket  apiece  —  they 
had  no  idea  what  they  would  need.  The  little  Japanese 
in  a  sou'wester  and  jersey,  with  a  bandanna  knotted 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  237 

around  his  neck,  cowboy  fashion,  was  a  sight  for  gods 
and  men,  but  it  must  be  said  to  Van's  credit  that  he 
refrained  from  laughter.  He  felt  too  much  of  a  clown 
in  his  own  sea-farer's  haberdashery.  One  of  the  last 
things  he  remembers  doing  was  going  with  Schreiber  to 
buy  a  revolver  which  the  newspaper-man  insisted  upon 
as  an  indispensable  part  of  his  outfit.  "Got  to  have 
a  gun,"  he  said  seriously.  "  It's  war  times  where  you're 
going,  you  know.  Even  if  you  only  needed  it  once, 
you'd  need  it  mighty  bad." 

"Well,  but  I  never  handled  one  of  'em  in  my  life  - 
I  don't  know  which  end  they  go  off  at,"  Van  Cleve 
objected.     "I'm  not  going  to  mix  into  any  fight,  any 
how  —  not  if  travelling's  good  in  the  opposite  direc 
tion,  I  know  that." 

"  Makes  no  difference.  You've  got  to  put  up  a  good, 
strong  bluff  just  the  same,"  said  his  new  friend  senten- 
tiously.  Van  had  to  yield  at  length. 

"All  right,"  he  said,  gingerly  stowing  the  weapon 
in  his  hip-pocket;  "this  is  where  it's  considered  good 
form  to  carry  it,  I  suppose  ?  You'll  change  your  mind 
about  my  needing  it  after  I've  blown  your  ear  off,  or 
plugged  a  hole  in  the  boiler.  Come  on,  fellows." 
They  went  down  to  the  pier. 

As  the  compiler  of  these  records  knows  next  to  noth 
ing  of  the  sea,  and  as  it  has  always  been  difficult  to  get 
anything  out  of  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  about  this  experi 
ence,  it  is  plain  that  we  cannot  be  going  to  enter  upon 
any  thrilling  nautical  adventures.  I  could  not  invent 
them,  and  Van  never  will  admit  that  there  were  any. 
It  seems  that  nothing  of  much  moment  happened  during 
the  first  part  of  the  voyage,  at  least ;  their  tug  was  not 
a  rapid  traveller,  and  she  labored  along  prosaically  off 
the  northern  coasts  of  Cuba,  which  were  sometimes  in 
sight  at  a  prudent  distance  for  fully  forty-eight  hours, 
day  and  night,  without  storms  or  warships  or  sensa- 


238  VAN   CLEVE: 

tional  encounters  of  any  kind.  The  population  of  the 
Milton  D.  Bowers,  meanwhile,  crew  and  passengers 
alike,  lived  at  inconceivably  close  quarters  in  demo 
cratic  freedom  and  astonishing  harmony,  and  with  a  dis 
regard  of  dirt,  discomfort,  and  inconvenience  which 
any  lady  who  reads  these  lines  would  have  looked  upon 
with  shuddering  horror.  What  would  Van  Cleve' s 
aunt,  what  would  any  of  his  female  relatives  have  said 
to  the  more  than  dubious  bunk  and  the  species  of  dog 
house  wherein  he  slept  of  a  night,  to  the  greasy  bench 
amidships  at  which  he  sat  down  to  meals,  to  the  ter 
rific  tea  and  coffee  and  ships'  biscuit  and  canned  toma 
toes  and  sizzling  fried  onions  which  he  consumed  (with 
thorough  relish  !)  out  of  tin  plates  and  mugs  and  un 
speakable  skillets  ?  What  would  they  have  thought  of 
his  shipmates,  than  whom  no  stranger  company  were 
ever  assembled  on  a  boat  since  Noah  went  aboard  the 
Ark  ?  Van  Cleve  himself  got  along  admirably  with 
them.  "They  were  all  right.  They  were  just  man, 
you  know,  just  plain  man,"  he  once  rather  obscurely 
said,  in  an  effort  to  describe  them ;  the  astute  tolerance 
of  the  phrase  better  describes  himself.  There  was 
only  one  of  them  whom  Van  felt  he  never  would  under 
stand,  and  that  was  Takuhira,  between  whom  and 
these  American  men  there  would  forever  hang  the 
impalpable  veil  of  race  and  of  habits  of  mind  uncon 
querably  alien.  "  You  can't  get  on  the  inside  of  him, 
somehow;  you  can't  think  his  thoughts.  It  wouldn't 
make  any  difference  how  long  you  were  with  him,  you'd 
never  know  him,"  Van  Cleve  remarked  to  Schreiber 
one  day. 

The  reporter  stared.  "What !  Little  Take-your- 
hair-off?  Why,  he's  easy  enough  to  know.  Why, 
I've  never  had  any  trouble  knowing  him,"  he  declared  ; 
"he's  just  as  white  as  any  man  I  ever  met  if  he  is  a 
Jap." 

"I  didn't  mean  anything  against  him,"  said  Van  Cleve. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  239 

And,  seeing  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  make  Schreiber 
comprehend  what  he  did  mean,  he  gave  up  the  subj  ect. 
He  had  observed  Schreiber's  character,  at  least,  to  some 
purpose.  In  fact,  the  newspaper-man  afforded  a  curious 
and  entertaining  study.  He  had  been  at  his  work  of  jour 
nalism  for  some  years,  after  having  successively  tried 
and  abandoned  stenography,  elocution,  commercial  trav 
elling  (with  a  line  of  notions  for  a  dry-goods  concern, 
he  said),  clerking  in  the  post-office,  and  zinc-mining  at 
Joplin.  As  preparation  for  the  career  of  letters,  he 
had  had  the  ordinary  common-school  education,  from 
which  he  had  evidently  profited  hardly  at  all  in  com 
parison  with  the  extraordinarily  wide  and  also  ridicu 
lously  narrow  schooling  he  later  received  from  the 
world  at  large.  Writing  was  his  profession,  yet  he  was 
no  more  capable  of  a  page  of  good  English  than  of  a 
page  of  ChoctawT ;  but  what  he  wrote  commanded  a 
price,  and  was  sufficiently  readable.  On  all  the  large 
political  and  economic  and  social  questions  of  the  day, 
he  had  not  an  idea  in  his  head ;  but  he  knew  the  names 
of  the  " bosses"  and  of  the  members  of  the  "machine" 
and  what  they  did  and  wanted,  in  twenty  cities,  Van 
Cleve's  own  among  them,  and  had  been  going  to  con 
ventions  and  listening  to  speeches  and  interviewing 
eminent  "statesmen"  (as  he  called  them)  for  years. 
He  was  a  perfectly  upright  man,  yet  he  would  sacrifice 
or  distort  beyond  recognition  any  fact  to  make  a 
"good  story,"  a  trait  of  his  which  Van  had  been 
quick  to  discover.  "Get  out  and  get  news.  If  you 
can't  get  it,  make  it !"  Schreiber  enthusiastically  quoted 
to  him  as  one  of  the  imperishable  maxims  of  an  editorial 
celebrity  under  whom  he  had  worked ;  he  was  eter 
nally  quoting  this  authority.  And  with  all  his  cheap 
standards,  his  bondage  to  catchwords,  his  jingo  patri 
otism,  he  displayed  not  a  few  of  the  qualities  which  we 
associate  with  very  high  and  strong  characters,  among 
them  a  devotion  to  his  duty  of  "getting  out  and  getting 


240  VAN  CLEVE: 

news"  -or  making  it  —  which  touched  the  heroic. 
Barely  recovered  from  a  dangerous  and  wearing  ill 
ness,  he  undertook  these  not  inconsiderable  hard 
ships  for  the  sake  of  his  magazine,  single-mindedly,  as 
if  there  were  no  other  course  to  pursue ;  he  was  dis 
tressingly  seasick,  he  could  scarcely  eat  or  sleep,  the 
fever  came  back  upon  him  intermittently,  he  suffered 
tortures  from  sunburn,  —  and  he  bore  it  all  without  a 
murmur. 

Van  Cleve,  for  his  part,  had  never  felt  better;  and, 
moreover,  turned  out  a  good  sailor  and  acceptable  ship 
mate,  lending  a  hand  to  the  management  of  the  vessel 
when  extra  strength  was  needed,  and  frankly  interested 
in  all  her  workings  and  in  the  crew,  whom  he  found  to 
be  not  in  the  least  like  the  sailormen  about  whom  he  had 
read.  They  were  neither  so  profane  nor  so  simple  nor  so 
blackguardly  nor  so  sublimely  honest  as  the  pages  of 
Captain  Marryat  and  Mr.  Clark  Russell  had  led  him  to 
expect.  The  engineer  had  been  first  a  motorman  in 
Chicago,  then  shipped  for  a  couple  of  seasons  —  so  he 
told  Van  —  on  a  Duluth  freighter,  then  drifted  to  New 
York,  and  worked  for  a  while  on  the  Staten  Island 
boats,  etc.,  etc.  His  helper  was  some  sort  of  half-breed 
Cuban.  The  cook  hailed  from  somewhere  in  Connecti 
cut,  he  said ;  and  he  also  said  that  he  had  once  cooked 
in  a  Maine  moose-camp  for  Colonel  Theodore  Roosevelt. 
Van  thought  he  might  possibly  be  telling  the  truth, 
although  he  was  not  wholly  reliable,  either  with  the 
cook-stove  or  the  whiskey-bottle.  "In  every  sea-story 
I  ever  read  the  cook  was  a  Lascar,"  Van  Cleve  said  to 
him  one  day ;  "I  feel  as  if  you  ought  to  be,  by  rights." 

"Well,  I  ain't.  I'm  Connecticut  from  the  ground 
up  —  never  was  farther  west  than  Milwaukee  in  my 
life,"  retorted  the  other.  "Though  I  did  think  some 
of  going  to  the  Klondike  last  year  when  the  rush  was 
on,"  he  added,  pensively  turning  the  bacon.  "But  I 
ain't  Alasker,  not  me." 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  241 

Captain  Bowers,  who  was  standing  near,  smiled 
grimly.  He  afterwards  told  Van  Cleve  that  he  had 
seen  Lascars  —  "  plenty  of  'em,  in  the  China  Seas, 
and  'round  the  Straits.  They  wa'n't  doing  any  cook 
ing,  though,"  he  said,  gazing  off  to  the  horizon  reminis- 
cently.  Van  longed  to  ask  what  they  were  doing. 
Boarding  his  ship  with  cutlasses  between  their  teeth, 
in  some  onslaught  of  demoniac  pirate  junks  ?  What 
ever  the  captain's  experiences  in  that  line,  he  had  no 
tales  to  tell  about  them ;  he  was  a  taciturn  man.  His 
taciturnity  even  extended  to  their  chief  recreation  on 
board  the  Milton  D.  Bowers,  a  game  of  cards,  which, 
whenever  the  skipper  took  a  hand,  invariably  had  to  be 
whist.  Unfortunately  the  ace  of  spades  went  over 
the  side  in  a  light  blow  the  morning  of  the  second  day 
out,  and  thereafter  they  were  obliged  to  play  euchre 
and  call  the  deuce  the  ace,  which  was  awkward  but 
effective.  They  had  only  the  one  pack,  and  that  of  an 
incredible  age  and  stickiness,  so  that  the  operations  of 
shuffling  and  dealing  required  even  more  than  the  usual 
skill ;  and  to  see  Captain  Bowers  do  it,  with  two  fingers 
gone,  was  a  marvel  from  which  Van  Cleve,  in  spite  of 
manners,  could  not  keep  his  eyes. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  a  fact  which  would  have 
escaped  Van's  notice  had  it  not  been  for  certain  Sab 
bath-day  observances  on  board;  the  engineer's  helper 
washed  his  shirt ;  and  Captain  Bowers  shaved  in  front 
of  six  inches  of  looking-glass  tacked  up  in  the  cabin, 
balancing  himself  nicely  to  the  roll  of  the  boat,  and 
wielding  the  razor  with  the  same  uncanny  dexterity, 
between  his  thumb  and  two  remaining  fingers.  Van 
examined  doubtfully  his  own  reflection  in  the  mirror, 
with  a  grimy  growth  of  beard  and  a  complexion  some 
what  the  hue  of  the  inside  of  an  old  boot-leg,  wherein 
his  small,  light  gray  eyes  looked  oddly  out  of  place, 
and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  a  shave  could  improve 
his  looks  so  little,  it  was  not  worth  the  risk.  For  al- 


242  VAN   CLEVE: 

though  it  was  almost  a  flat  calm,  the  Milton  D.  Bowers, 
as  she  slowly  progressed,  developed  an  extraordinary 
sidelong  rocking-horse  motion  of  her  own,  which  would 
have  affected  any  hand  less  steady  than  her  captain's. 
Already  in  the  early  morning  it  was  beginning  to  be 
unbelievably  hot ;  the  horizon,  where  no  land  was  just 
now  visible  and  not  another  sail  or  smokestack,  swam 
in  a  glare  of  sea  and  sky  intolerable  to  the  vision. 
"  We're  good  and  tropical  now,"  Schreiber  said,  rearing 
painfully  up  from  his  favorite  recumbent  posture  along 
the  decks,  to  look  at  it.  "We  ought  to  make  Baiquiri 
by  to-night,  isn't  that  so,  Captain?" 

"'Tain't  Baiqum,  it's  Daiquiri,"  said  Bowers,  over 
his  shoulder,  as  he  walked  forward.  "Yes,  I  guess  so, 
if  we  have  luck." 

"Is  that  where  we  land?"  Van  Cleve  asked. 

"That's  where  the  army  landed,"  said  the  captain, 
non-committally.  Van  felt  startled  at  the  sudden 
nearness  of  the  journey's  end. 

However,  man  proposes  !  It  was  only  a  short  while 
after  this  conversation  that  the  engines  of  the  Milton 
D.  Bowers,  to  the  surprise  and  consternation  of  her 
passengers,  began  perceptibly  to  lag;  they  slowed 
down;  they  ceased  utterly  !  A  great  powwowing  arose 
between  the  engineer  and  his  assistant;  Captain 
Bowers  took  a  hand;  the  engineer  disappeared  into 
the  bowels  of  his  machine,  and  erelong  boiler-factory 
hammerings  and  clinkings  resounded.  Van  Cleve  and 
the  attache,  after  offering  their  help,  thought  it  best 
to  keep  out  of  the  way,  and  refrain  from  annoying 
questions;  but  Schreiber  had  no  such  scruples.  He 
made  repeated  trips  to  the  seat  of  trouble  and  at  last 
brought  back  the  doleful  information  that  they  were 
going  to  be  held  up  for  the  Lord  knew  how  long  !  "I 
believe  it  isn't  anything  very  bad,  because  he  says  he 
can  fix  it,  only  he  doesn't  know  how  long  it'll  take. 
This  is  grand,  isn't  it?  This  just  suits  us.  We're 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  243 

not  in  any  hurry  to  get  there ;  we  don't  give  a  darn 
if  we  never  see  Cuba.  I'd  like  to  spend  a  summer 
vacation  right  on  this  spot.  The  bathing  facilities  are 
so  good,  you  know.'7 

"How  far  are  we  out,  anyhow  ?" 

"Too  far  to  swim,  that's  all  I  know,"  said  the  cor 
respondent.  He  resumed  his  lounge.  They  all  sat 
awhile  in  disconcerted  silence,  until  at  length  some 
body  proposed  the  cards  to  pass  time  away ;  and  they 
were  on  the  seventh  hand  of  cutthroat,  when  Captain 
Bowers  came  and  joined  them.  For  a  moment,  this 
looked  encouraging;  but  to  their  eager  inquiry  about 
the  prospects,  he  would  only  say  that  he  didn't  know  — 
it  might  be  two  or  three  hours  yet  —  perhaps  more  — 
he  couldn't  say  —  depended  on  what  Tom  found  when 
he  got  the  jacket  off  —  he  couldn't  say  —  "  It's  your 
deal,  ain't  it,  Kendrick?  My  cut." 

As  they  were  sitting,  Van  having  just  dealt,  and 
turned  the  queen  of  diamonds,  on  a  sudden,  they  heard, 
a  good  way  to  the  southwest,  a  dull  rolling  and  booming 
sound  that  paused  and  presently  broke  out  again. 

"Hello!"  said  Schreiber,  looking  up  and  around; 
"storm  somewhere ? " 

Captain  Bowers  laid  down  his  hand  of  cards  and  said, 
"Boys,  that's  cannon !" 

In  a  minute  the  engineer,  chancing  to  stick  out  his 
head  for  a  breath  of  air,  stopped  in  the  act  of  mopping 
the  sweat  from  his  forehead  and  arms  with  a  handful  of 
waste,  and  called  in  surprise:  "What's  the  matter? 
D'ye  see  anything  ?  What  did  you  fellows  all  jump  up 
that  way  for?"  He  had  heard  nothing  in  the  midst 
of  his  own  noise  and  clanging.  The  rest  looked  at  one 
another  shamefacedly ;  they  discovered  that  they  had 
all,  on  the  same  unconscious  impulse,  scrambled  to  their 
feet,  and  were  crowding  and  staring  in  the  direction  of 
the  cannonading,  as  if  they  might  expect  to  see  it,  or 
get  nearer  to  it  by  the  action  !  In  fact,  by  some  illu- 


244  VAN   CLEVE: 

sion,  the  next  detonations  seemed  to  them  for  an  in 
stant  much  louder.  It  kept  on.  They  stood  a  long 
while  listening.  Once  Schreiber  said  in  a  subdued 
voice  :  "My  Lord,  fellows,  that  sounds  like  the  Fourth 
of  July  back  home,  and  it's  killing  men  right  along !" 
Van  Cleve,  too,  had  been  thinking  of  that ;  and  of  that 
evening,  scarcely  three  weeks  ago,  when  he  had  sat 
with  Lorrie  on  the  porch,  and  they  wondered  what  can 
non  sounded  like. 

The  captain  looked  at  his  watch  and  said  it  was  ten 
o'clock ;  and  one  of  them  asked  him  where  he  thought 
the  battle  might  be  going  on  —  if  they  were  shelling 
the  city,  would  we  hear  it  ?  He  shook  his  head.  "  Don't 
know.  Them  guns  are  firing  at  sea,  though,  which 
ever  way  they're  being  p'inted.  The  sound  comes 
quicker  to  you  on  the  water  —  leastways  that's  what 
I've  always  been  told,"  he  said  circumspectly. 

"Do  you  believe  the  fleet's  trying  to  come  out?" 
Van  Cleve  and  the  newspaper-man  chorussed  in  one 
excited  breath. 

"I  presume  likely,"  said  Captain  Bowers. 

He  went  to  speak  to  the  engineer,  and  Schreiber 
watched  him  with  a  certain  admiration.  "If  he  was 
in  a  book  now,  you  wouldn't  believe  in  him;  you'd 
think  he  was  ridiculously  overdrawn,"  he  said  to  Van; 
"he  doesn't  seem  possible,  somehow,  with  his  tugboat 
and  his  chin-beard,  and  that  funny  down-east  drawl. 
1  Presume  likely  ! '  Like  any  old  New  England  deacon  ! 
You  notice  he  never  swears  ?  You  can't  phase  him  — 
nothing  phases  him  !" 

They  tried  to  resume  the  game,  but  even  the  un- 
phasable  Captain  Bowers  was  not  quite  equal  to  that, 
and  after  he  had  attempted  to  take  Takuhira's  knave  of 
trumps  with  the  king,  after  Van  Cleve  had  announced 
that  the  deuce  of  spades  had  got  into  the  euchre-deck 
through  somebody's  mistake  and  been  dealt  to  him, 
and  after  Schreiber  had  twice  neglected  to  follow  suit 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  245 

to  the  left  bower,  they  gave  it  up  with  some  sheepish 
joking.  The  day  wore  on.  The  cannon  ceased,  and 
the  silence  left  them  all  at  a  higher  tension  than  ever. 
The  cook  fished  out  from  somewhere  an  old  battered 
pair  of  glasses  with  a  flawed  lens,  and  from  that  on 
somebody  was  constantly  on  the  lookout  (though  the 
thing  would  scarcely  carry  a  hundred  yards)  sweeping 
the  seas  round  and  round  in  expectation  of  no  one  knew 
what.  At  some  time  in  the  afternoon  they  sat  down  to 
a  belated  and  half-cooked  meal  whereat  the  engineer 
complained  loud  and  bitterly.  He  wanted  to  know 
what  all  you  dubs  (and  sundry  other  unamiable  des 
ignations)  were  doing,  anyhow  ?  He  opined  that  he 
was  the  only  man  within  sight  or  hearing  who  was  on 
his  job.  He  intimated  highly  uncomplimentary  doubts 
as  to  the  mind,  morals,  parentage,  and  previous  career 
of  everybody  on  board,  especially  the  cook,  which  the 
latter  gentleman  naturally  resented.  Captain  Bowers 
had  to  intervene ;  and  in  the  middle  of  it  all  somebody 
cried  that  the  guns  were  going  again,  producing  peace 
on  the  instant,  as  if  by  magic  !  Afterwards,  realizing 
that  there  was  some  justice  in  his  point  of  view,  one  or 
other  of  them  volunteered  as  engineer's  helper,  and 
held  a  candle,  or  passed  tools,  or  hung  on  a  wrench  at 
intervals  the  rest  of  the  day.  Van  Cleve,  for  one,  was 
glad  of  any  employment ;  his  nerves,  like  everybody's, 
were  feeling  the  strain.  It  was  dark  before  they  got 
started. 

It  was  night,  in  fact,  which  came  on  them  with  the 
startling  suddenness  of  the  tropics,  clouded  over,  with 
no  stars  nor  moonlight.  The  little  tug,  crowding  on  all 
steam,  ploughed  through  the  vast,  black,  watery  silence 
with  as  much  commotion  as  leviathan,  reckless  of  conse 
quences.  Excepting  Captain  Bowers  and  the  Japanese, 
both  of  whom  contrived  to  keep  an  appearance,  at  least, 
of  stolidity,  everybody  was  very  much  excited,  and 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  random  talk  and  laughing  at 


246  VAN   CLEVE: 

nothing ;  also,  the  cook  wanted  to  sing,  and  wept  when 
Bowers  forbade  it  and  sternly  took  away  his  bottle 
of  whiskey.  Schreiber  expostulated  sympathetically. 
"  Why,  with  all  the  noise  we're  making,  what's  the  odds 
if  he  does  sing,  captain?  Nobody  could  hear  him." 

"  We  could  hear  him,"  said  the  captain,  with  epigram 
matic  force.  They  all  thought  this  was  a  prodigiously 
good  joke  on  the  cook;  Van  Cleve  never  remembered 
to  have  laughed  so  heartily ! 

"I  suppose  if  we  should  run  into  a  Spanish  ship,  they 
wouldn't  do  a  thing  to  us?"  he  said  to  Schreiber  in 
ironical  gayety. 

"Not  a  thing!"  agreed  the  other.  Then  he  added 
more  seriously :  "But  they  won't  be  coming  this  way, 
you  know.  They'll  make  for  Havana,  most  likely  — 
if  they  get  away  at  all."  That  the  Spanish  might  have 
won  in  the  contest  did  not  occur  to  either  of  them. 

Some  while  after  this,  Van  Cleve  observed  a  small, 
steady  star  very  low  down  near  what  should  have  been 
the  horizon,  as  he  judged,  if  they  had  been  able  to  distin 
guish  sea  from  sky ;  he  pointed  it  out  casually  to  the 
captain,  who  threw  a  perfunctory  glance  in  the  direction 
and  grunted. 

"That's  the  land,"  he  said ;  "that's  a  light  somewhere 
on  shore.  You  could  'a'  heard  the  surf  if  you'd  listened. 
Hear  it  now?" 

Van  strained  his  ears,  but  could  make  out  nothing; 
the  throbbing  of  their  machinery  and  the  loud  rush  of 
water  alongside  overpowered  his  landsman's  senses ; 
Schreiber  affirmed  that  he  could  see  the  coast  in  black 
outline  against  the  lesser  blackness,  but  perhaps  his 
fancy  helped  him.  In  a  little  the  light  vanished,  blotted 
out,  no  doubt,  by  some  reach  of  land,  for  they  were 
both  quite  sure  they  felt  the  vessel  veer  sharply  and 
change  her  course.  And  now,  all  at  once,  there  came 
to  them  a  great,  hot,  sighing  breath,  offshore,  laden 
(or  so  they  imagined)  with  earth  odors,  strange  and 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  247 

familiar ;  then  a  cool  puff ;  then  another  warm.  The 
feeling  of  it  was  curiously  welcome ;  land  is  good  after 
the  sea.  The  Milton  D.  Bowers  slacked  up ;  she  had  a 
grotesque  air  of  suddenly  remembering  something. 

11  Guess  the  old  man  thinks  we'd  better  go  slow  here," 
Schreiber  suggested  in  an  undertone ;  "he  doesn't  quite 
know  where  he  is  —  no  lights  nor  anything.  We  must 
be  somewhere  off  Guantanamo,  I  think." 

He  had  not  finished  speaking  when  there  roared  up 
out  of  the  darkness  a  huge  devastating  bulk,  a  thing 
of  terror  coming  at  them  like  the  end  of  the  world. 
There  was  a  light.  Van  Cleve  for  one  appalling  second 
beheld  a  mighty,  gray  shoulder  towering  above  them, 
imminent,  unescapable.  "It  looked  as  high  as  the 
Union  Trust  Building,"  he  said  afterwards.  It  was  in 
reality  the  bow  of  the  torpedo-boat  destroyer  Inverness, 
not  considered  by  naval  judges  at  all  a  large  or  powerful 
vessel.  She  thundered  upon  them;  the  Milton  D. 
Bowers  raised  a  wild  screech  as  from  one  throat,  and 
went  astern  in  a  frenzy ;  and  the  Inverness  must  have 
sheered  just  in  the  nick  of  time,  or  they  would  all, 
herself  included,  have  been  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
and  this  tale  need  never  have  been  written.  As  it  was, 
the  glancing  blow  she  struck  them  sent  the  poor  tug 
staggering,  and  there  was  a  blood-curdling  noise  of 
splintered  wood.  When  Van  got  his  breath,  he  found 
himself  in  the  foolish  attitude  of  clinging  to  the  far  rail, 
and  "holding  back"  with  might  and  main !  They 
were  still  afloat ;  they  were  still  on  an  even  keel.  Near 
him  Schreiber  sprawled  on  the  deck,  clutching  one 
ankle  and  cursing  voluminously;  he  had  sprained  it, 
falling  over  a  pile  of  coal,  and  was  in  severe  pain.  Ex 
traordinary  sounds  arose  from  every  part  of  the  boat  ; 
somebody  was  praying  in  a  loud,  rapid,  fervent  voice 
like  a  camp-meeting  preacher.  There  was  a  hail  from 
above. 

"Goldenrod,  ahoy!    Are  you  much  hurt?" 


248  VAN   CLEVE: 

"This  ain't  no  Goldenrod.  This  is  the  Milton  D. 
Bowers,"  shouted  the  captain,  crossly ;  and  in  a  moment 
Van  saw  him  aft  with  a  lantern  over  the  side,  studying 
the  damage.  The  prayers  ceased  abruptly ;  Van  Cleve 
had  a  suspicion  they  proceeded  from  the  cook,  but  he 
never  knew.  Takuhira  appeared  from  nowhere,  and 
helped  Schreiber  take  off  his  shoe.  Up  overhead  an 
invisible  power  manipulated  the  light  this  way  and  that, 
until  the  tug  lay  within  its  zone ;  they  could  see  faces, 
kindly  and  concerned  and  inquiring,  peering  down  at 
them.  A  man  whom  Van,  in  his  ignorance  of  naval 
matters,  supposed  to  be  a  "  petty  officer,"  whatever  that 
might  mean,  repeated  the  former  question.  "Are  you 
much  hurt  ?  Need  any  help  ?"  he  asked. 

Captain  Bowers,  after  further  scrutiny,  pronounced 
the  Milton  D.  in  no  danger.  "She  ain't  started  any 
where,  fur's  I  kin  see,  jest  her  side  planed  off  some," 
he  said,  and,  walking  to  the  engine-house,  called  in, 
"All  right  there,  Tom?" 

"I  guess  so,"  said  the  engineer  from  the  depths. 

''You  ought  to  have  kept  out  of  the  way,  captain. 
We  can't  have  anybody  gum-shoeing  around  here,  you 
know  that,"  remarked  the  Inverness,  and  made  another 
offer  of  standing  by  in  case  they  discovered  trouble. 
Captain  Bowers  grumpily  declining,  the  officer  turned 
away,  probably  to  report  to  a  superior.  Some  of  the 
heads  disappeared  from  the  rail ;  one  of  those  remain 
ing  facetiously  invited  his  mates  to  come  and  see  the 
bunch  of  Weary  Willies  in  the  cup-defender.  Another 
wanted  to  know  who  the  reverend  conducting  services 
was?  Van  Cleve  stared  up  at  them  in  wonder; 
he  had  supposed  that  everybody  —  of  the  rank  and 
file,  at  least  —  had  to  keep  mum  as  a  mouse  on  board  a 
war-ship.  They  could  hear  an  order  given;  the  big 
hull  vibrated ;  the  Inverness  began  deliberately  and  im 
pressively  to  back  away.  Even  in  the  midst  of  his 
suffering,  professional  zeal  awoke  in  the  newspaper- 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  249 

correspondent ;   he  hobbled  upright,  clinging  to  Taku- 
hira's  shoulder,  and  hailed  desperately. 

"Kit  Wait,  will  you?  What's  happened?  We 
heard  cannon.  What's  doing?  Was  there  a  fight?" 

The  Inverness  did  not  answer ;  silence  had  suddenly 
fallen  on  board  of  her,  and  all  the  faces  retreated.  In  a 
moment  the  man  who  had  spoken  to  them  first  came 
back,  making  way  at  the  rail  for  a  tall  gentleman  in  a 
beautiful,  clean,  snowy  white,  tropical  uniform,  at 
once  cool  and  radiant  in  the  half-light.  He  could  be 
seen  to  look  them  over  with  good-natured  condescen 
sion,  while  the  subordinate  pointed  and  explained ;  then 
he  nodded,  gave  the  other  an  order  (as  it  seemed)  and, 
walked  away.  Schreiber  witnessed  the  pantomime  in 
an  agony  of  curiosity.  The  first  man  stepped  again  to 
the  side;  he  set  a  hand  to  his  mouth  and  cried  out, 
"  Newspaper-boat  ?  " 

"Yes.  Gulf  States  Magazine,  Jacksonville  Telegraph, 
Atlanta  Post,  Charleston  Mail!"  the  correspondent 
roared  back  impatiently.  None  of  the  last-named  papers 
had  any  existence  outside  of  his  own  imagination,  as 
he  later  informed  Van  Cleve.  "That  ought  to  be 
enough  for  you,"  he  added  under  his  breath.  "News 
paper-boat!  Take  us  for  a  party  of  Episcopal  bishops  ?  " 

"Well,  you  can  tell  'em  the  fleet  came  out !" 

"Where  are  they  ?    What  became  of  'em  ?     What  - 
who  —  which--  ?"  Schreiber  was  fairly  inarticulate 
from  excitement ;   he  hopped  madly  on  one  leg. 

"Sunk  —  beached  —  burned  up — the  whole  shootin' 
match  I"  bawled  their  informant,  succinctly.  He  made 
a  dramatic  pause.  "Had  to  chase  one  of  'em  down  the 
coast  a  good  piece,  but  we  nipped  her,  too  !"  The 
Inverness  gathered  way,  moving  off,  and  the  wash  she 
kicked  up  slapped  against  the  tug,  causing  it  to  rock  vio 
lently.  He  raised  his  voice,  making  a  trumpet  of  both 
hands  this  time.  "Pity  you  missed  it.  It's  all  over  but 
the  shouting.  There  ain't  any  more  Spanish  Fleet !" 


CHAPTER  V 
BUT  'TWAS  A  GLORIOUS  VICTORY 

NEXT  morning  at  daybreak,  the  argonauts  steamed 
into  the  harbor  of  Guantanamo,  which  they  found  al 
ready  populous  with  shipping,  colliers,  transports,  light 
ers,  a  whole  fleet  of  little  vessels  of  their  own  caliber, 
herded  together  in  one  place  where  the  Milton  D.  Bowers 
herself  modestly  sought  a  berth,  and  half  a  dozen  tall 
warships.  They  recognized  their  friend  of  the  night 
before,  the  Inverness,  now  peaceably  riding  at  anchor 
on  the  east  side  of  the  channel,  close  inshore  and  just 
opposite  some  ridges  of  freshly  turned  earth  which  looked 
like  the  bunkers  on  the  golf-links  at  home,  Van  Cleve 
thought,  but  which,  he  was  told,  were  the  intrench- 
ments  of  Camp  Huntington.  All  around  there  were 
other  earthworks  and  tents,  white  and  blue  and  khaki- 
colored  uniforms  going  to  and  fro,  bugle-calls  and  the 
smoke  of  camp-fires,  and  overhead  the  flag  spreading 
its  brave  and  cheerful  colors  on  a  strong  breeze.  It  was 
a  stirring  spectacle ;  and  though  this  place  is  adorned 
with  some  of  as  noble  and  beautiful  scenery  as  may  be 
found  anywhere  in  the  world,  I  doubt  if  the  travellers 
made  much  of  it.  They  were  not  caring  for  scenery, 
and  the  sight  of  this  armed  occupation,  vigilant  and 
powerful,  and  the  news  of  the  past  night  would  have 
distracted  them  from  the  most  wonderful  panorama  on 
the  face  of  the  globe. 

They  landed,  Schreiber  insisting  on  going,  too,  al 
though  he  was  limping  painfully,  with  his  ankle  very 
much  swollen  in  a  rough  bandage  they  had  contrived, 

250 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  251 

and  went  up  to  a  shining  little  sheet-iron-walled  stove  of 
a  building  which  they  had  found  to  be  the  telegraph- 
office,  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  under  Captain  McCalla's 
camp  of  marines ;  and  here  Schreiber  had  the  luck  to 
fall  in  with  two  other  correspondents,  a  Mr.  Hunter  of 
the  New  York  Planet,  and  another  man  whose  name 
Van  Cleve  did  not  catch,  both  of  them  just  from  the 
front  with  accounts  of  Saturday's  fighting  and  San 
Juan  Hill.  The  army  had  known  nothing  of  the  navy's 
doings,  and  supposed  the  cannonading  they  had  heard 
to  be  Sampson  bombarding  the  forts  at  the  mouth  of 
the  harbor,  as  he  had  done  before  !  "  Pshaw,  we  knew 
better  than  that ! "  said  Schreiber,  with  mock  superiority. 
"Well,  our  fellows  have  too  many  other  things  to 
think  about,  back  there  in  the  jungle,"  Hunter  said. 
He  told  them  something  of  the  fight,  the  other  man 
joining  in.  It  hadn't  been  any  such  soft  snap  as  the 
navy  boys  had,  to  judge  by  what  you  heard.  These 
Spaniards  weren't  running  away,  nor  dreaming  of  it ; 
they  were  fighters  —  they  could  shoot,  too.  "Why,  it 
took  Lawton  nearly  a  whole  day,  nearly  the  whole  of 
Friday  —  let's  see,  it  was  Friday,  wasn't  it,  Jim  ?  —  to 
carry  that  position  at  that  little  town  where  the  church 
was,  Caney  they  called  it  —  nearly  the  whole  day,  and 
everybody  thought  it  wouldn't  be  but  an  hour  or  so  ! 
Well,  of  course,  they  outnumbered  our  fellows.  Oh, 
yes,  two  to  one  at  least.  The  Cubans  hardly  counted ; 
we  did  the  real  fighting.  Oh,  I  suppose  some  of  the 
Cubans  did  pretty  well,  but  I  didn't  see  any  of  'em. 
They  weren't  near  so  many  of  them  wounded  and  killed 
as  we  had,  in  proportion.  Bet  you,  if  it  wasn't  for  us, 
they'd  be  butchering  the  Spanish  prisoners  in  cold 
blood  right  this  minute ;  that's  about  what  the  Spanish 
and  Cubans  were  doing  to  each  other  before  we  came, 
you  know.  Everybody  says  that's  the  reason  the 
Spanish  fight  so  desperately;  they  fully  expect  to  be 
shot  down  without  mercy,  if  they  get  caught.  How's 


252  VAN  CLEVE: 

that  for  barbarity  and  ignorance?  Did  you  hear 
about  that  poor  fellow,  Lieutenant  Ord  of  the  Sixth  ? 
Did  you  hear  what  happened  to  him  ?  Why,  he  got  to 
the  top  of  the  hill  with  the  first  ones  when  they  charged 
it  (Hey  ?  Yes,  it  was  the  Sixth,  and  the  Rough  Riders, 
and  the  colored  regiment,  and  parts  of  other  regiments 
mixed  in),  and  this  Ord  came  to  a  Spaniard  lying  there 
badly  wounded,  and  says  : '  Look  out  for  this  man,  boys/ 
or  'Pick  up  this  fellow  and  see  he  gets  taken  care  of/  or 
something  like  that.  And  with  that  the  Spaniard 
raised  up  and  shot  him  through  the  heart !  Suppose 
he  thought  Ord  was  telling  the  men  to  bayonet  him 
and  finish  him.  Probably  that's  what  a  Spanish  or 
Cuban  officer  would  have  done.  Eh  ?  Oh,  the  men 
killed  him ;  about  tore  him  to  pieces,  they  say.  They 
thought  a  great  deal  of  Ord.  Nice  fellow,  they  say  —  I 
never  happened  to  meet  him.  But  that  just  shows 
you  what  kind  these  Spanish  are ;  and  let  me  tell  you, 
we  won't  any  of  us  have  much  use  for  the  Cubans,  either, 
by  the  time  we  get  through  with  it.  Dog  eat  dog,  that's 
what  it  is.  Uncle  Sam's  going  to  be  thoroughly  sick 
of  this  Cuba  Libre  job  before  long.  All  our  fine  men 
sacrificed!  You  ought  to  see  the  wounded  —  or  rather 
you  oughtn't  to  see  them  if  you  can  help  it.  My  God, 
it's  awful !  Awful.  War's  about  what  Sherman  said 
it  was,  I  guess." 

They  talked  on  a  little  excitedly  at  times,  still  under 
the  spell  of  what  they  had  witnessed.  Both  of  them 
were  dirty,  haggard,  ready  to  drop  with  fatigue  ;  Hunter 
told  Van  he  had  not  slept  for  fifteen  hours,  most  of 
which  had  been  spent  on  the  way  from  the  battle-field 
here.  It  was  nothing  but  a  jungle  trail,  almost  impas 
sable  in  places,  and  they  had  been  obliged  to  tramp  the 
most  of  it,  their  horses  having  given  out  very  soon ;  it 
was  next  to  impossible  to  get  any  kind  of  transportation 
in  the  country.  Nevertheless,  they  were  starting 
back  as  soon  as  they  had  had  some  rest;  something 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  253 

might  happen  any  minute,  and  they  didn't  want  to 
miss  it.  Schreiber  ruefully  cursed  his  luck  ;  he  realized 
that  they  could  not  be  burdened  with  a  lame  man,  or 
he  would  have  gone  with  them,  ankle  and  all.  In  fact, 
they  earnestly  counselled  him  to  keep  on  by  boat  to 
Siboney.  "  There's  nothing  more  for  us  in  the  sea  side 
of  the  fighting,  or  we'd  go  back  that  way  ourselves," 
Hunter  explained.  "  Thing  is  we  want  to  be  on  land 
the  whole  time  now.  Yesterday  afternoon  before  we 
left  camp  there  was  talk  around  that  Shafter  was  think 
ing  of  falling  back  —  retreating  five  miles  or  so  into  the 
hills.  That  would  probably  be  in  this  direction.  But 
you'd  better  go  on  to  Siboney,  and  you  can  follow 
the  army  up  in  case  they  do  move."  They  were 
very  willing,  however,  to  have  Takuhira  accompany 
them ;  one  of  them  had  met  his  countryman,  Lieu 
tenant  Akiyama  of  the  Imperial  Japanese  Navy,  who 
was  now  with  the  fleet,  observing  operations.  Van 
Cleve,  too,  might  have  gone,  but  upon  hearing  his 
errand,  although  neither  of  them,  unfortunately,  knew 
his  friend  Gilbert,  they  both  assured  him  that  Siboney 
would  be  the  best  place  to  look  for  him. 

"  Everybody's  there,  or  has  been  there  —  or  at 
Daiquiri.  The  Red  Cross,  and  the  correspondents, 
and  the  post-office  people,  and  everybody.  That's  the 
place  to  look  for  any  one.  If  you  can't  find  him,  you're 
sure  to  find  somebody  that  knows  him,  and  can  put 
you  on  his  trail,"  they  said.  Van  began  to  feel  that  he 
was  getting  "hot,"  as  they  say  in  the  children's  games, 
and  wanted  to  go  at  once  and  send  telegrams  to  Lorrie, 
and  to  his  family ;  but  the  gentleman  in  charge  of  the 
station  refused,  not  without  a  smile.  The  govern 
ment,  he  said  politely,  had  raised  and  repaired  the 
Haytian  cable  at  this  point  for  its  own  use,  and  private 
individuals,  unless  in  some  such  capacity  as  Mr. Hunter's, 
had  no  status  just  then.  Of  course,  if  Mr.  Kendrick 
had  some  life-and-death  matter  —  but  merely  to  reas- 


254  VAN  CLEVE: 

sure  his  people  —  "I  understand!"  said  Van,  cutting 
him  short  brusquely,  annoyed  at  himself. 

Afterwards  the  party  all  dined  together  on  board 
the  Milton  D.  Bowers,  magnificently,  the  cook  having 
found  means  to  add  some  crabs  and  a  basket  of  mangoes 
to  their  ordinary  bill-of-fare,  which  was  further  en 
riched  by  a  can  of  baked  beans  from  some  unknown 
source.  "I  tell  you,  the  boys  at  the  front  would  like 
some  of  this !  Those  beans  would  look  like  the 
Waldorf-Astoria  to  them,"  said  one  of  the  corre 
spondents;  "all  the  time  we've  been  with  them,  no 
body's  had  anything  but  bacon  and  hardtack,  and  not 
too  much  of  that,  poor  fellows  !  Well,  war's  war,  I 
suppose!"  With  which  philosophical  reflection  he 
fell  to  heartily. 

At  two  o'clock  the  Milton  D.,  according  to  arrange 
ment,  once  more  set  sail ;  and  Van  Cleve  bade  good-by 
to  these  gentlemen,  none  of  whom,  I  believe,  he  has 
ever  met  since,  except  the  Japanese  attache,  who 
turned  up  a  few  days  later  at  Siboney  in  company  with 
Major  Shiba,  the  other  military  envoy  of  his  country. 
Mr.  Takuhira  must  have  borrowed  some  of  his  superior's 
clothes,  or  recruited  his  wardrobe  from  somewhere, 
for  he  was  quite  immaculate  in  white  ducks  and  fresh 
linen,  notwithstanding  which  he  shook  hands  with 
Van  Cleve  (who  was  anything  but  immaculate  in  the 
same  blue  flannel  shirt  he  had  worn  for  nearly  a  fort 
night)  with  democratic  heartiness,  and  wished  him 
well,  and  laughed  and  said  "Sayonara!  So  long, 
old  chap  ! "  as  he  got  into  the  waiting  launch.  Santiago 
had  surrendered ;  the  campaign  was  over ;  the  foreign 
officers  in  observation  were  returning  to  the  quarters 
assigned  them  on  board  ship ;  even  for  Van  Cleve  him 
self,  the  adventure  was  ended. 

He  was  very  far  from  foreseeing  all  this,  though,  as 
they  steamed  west  along  the  coast  in  a  heavy  sea  and 
rising  storm,  with  Schreiber  erelong  wretchedly  ill 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  255 

in  the  cabin,  as  usual,  and  Captain  Bowers  taciturnly 
smoking  a  particularly  rank  and  vicious  pipe  which  he 
seemed  to  enjoy  most  when  the  tug's  motion  was  at  its 
worst.  By  this  time,  Van  had  got  used  to  the  idea  of 
chasing  Bob  Gilbert  about  and  never  finding  him ;  he 
expected  another  hunt  at  Siboney,  and  to  be  told  again 
of  some  fresh  place  to  which  the  luckless  fellow  might 
have  gone.  The  next  morning,  after  a  night  of  thresh 
ing  about  in  the  seas,  Van  was  not  much  surprised  to 
hear  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  make  a  landing 
until  the  wind  and  swell  died  dow^n  somewhat.  He 
could  both  see  and  hear  the  surf  now,  booming  and 
breaking  on  the  shore  of  the  unprotected  little  cove, 
a  formidable  spectacle.  They  contemplated  it  all  day 
long,  the  tug  taking  up  a  station  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
out,  in  line  with  a  number  of  transports  and  other 
vessels,  like  themselves  afraid  to  risk  launching  a 
boat  in  such  weather.  Siboney  appeared  from  this 
distance  to  be  a  row  of  shanties,  a  half-constructed 
pier,  and  the  broken  ruins  of  an  old  one  swept  by 
waves,  with  a  slender  strip  of  beach  in  front  and,  grim 
mest  sight  of  all,  a  big  lighter,  lying  on  her  side,  about 
fifty  yards  from  shore,  a  castaway,  with  the  seas  pound 
ing  over  her  desolately. 

"Them  other  things  you  kin  make  out  closer  in 
shore  is  some  more  boats  and  truck  that  got  stove  in 
trying  to  land  through  the  surf,"  Captain  Bowers 
said,  pointing  out  various  dark  objects  wiiich  had 
puzzled  Van  Cleve's  inexperienced  eyes.  "  Ain't  it  a 
sin  V  a  shame?  All  that  good  stuff  wasted!"  His 
tone  was  mournful ;  it  was  the  first  and  only  time  he 
had  displayed  so  much  feeling  of  any  kind,  but  Van 
understood  and  thoroughly  sympathized.  The  young 
man's  own  thrifty  soul  was  outraged. 

After  twelve  hours  or  so  more  of  waiting,  during 
which,  although  there  was  a  great  deal  of  coming  and 
going  on  shore,  they  heard  no  sounds  of  firing,  or 


256  VAN  CLEVE: 

other  indications  of  hostilities  being  resumed,  he  and 
Schreiber  at  last  got  to  land  in  a  rowboat  manned  by 
a  pair  of  tatterdemalions  which  came  out  to  meet 
them  finally,  in  answer  to  repeated  signals,  when 
Captain  Bowers  had  taken  the  tug  in  as  near  as  was 
prudent.  Both  boatmen  were  armed  with  pistols  and 
machetes,  though  nowise  soldierly  (or  indeed  at  all 
prepossessing)  in  appearance.  "  Must  be  the  command 
ing  general  of  the  Cuban  armies  and  his  chief  of  staff," 
the  newspaper-man  suggested  satirically;  "and,  by 
George,  look  at  the  rest  of  the  patriots  getting  ready 
to  land  us!  Look  out  for  your  watch,  Kendrick!" 
In  fact,  there  seemed  to  be  a  lively  traffic  of  this  sort 
among  the  native  longshoremen,  running  down  into 
the  water  to  seize  a  boat  by  the  bows,  and  rush  it 
bodily  through  the  surf,  up  high  and  dry  on  the  sand. 
There  was  a  mob  of  them,  clamoring,  villainous- 
faced,  incredibly  dirty ;  the  beach  was  busy  as  a  hive. 
It  was  littered  with  wreckage  of  lighters  and  launches, 
partly  submerged,  or  standing  up  stark  and  stiff  when 
the  tide  was  out.  There  were  mounds  of  barrels  and 
boxes  covered  with  tarpaulin,  under  guard ;  mule- 
teams  and  wagons,  their  drivers  cursing  royally; 
soldiers  without  end ;  and  a  handful  of  bedraggled- 
looking  civilians,  government  employees,  members  of 
the  Red  Cross  commission,  more  correspondents. 
The  line  of  huts  they  had  seen  from  the  harbor 
the  day  before  turned  out  to  be  ten  or  a  dozen 
zinc-roofed,  boxlike  structures  built  originally  by  the 
Spanish-American  Iron  Company,  which  had  mines 
somewhere  in  the  neighborhood,  as  Schreiber  vaguely 
recollected  hearing,  for  its  operatives,  but  now  in  use 
as  hospitals  ;  and  one  of  them,  the  largest,  bore  a  sign  : 
"United  States  Post-Office,  Military  Station  No.  1." 
Van  Cleve  and  his  companion  walked  up  towards  it. 
Fresh  from  the  strong,  clean  sea,  they  had  not  gone  a 
hundred  steps  inland  when  a  puff  of  tepid,  foul  air, 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  257 

heavy  with  unspeakable  odors  of  animal  and  vegetable 
decay  commingled,  fairly  strangled  them.  Schreiber, 
who  had  been  limping  vigorously  ahead,  turned  alarm 
ingly  pale  and  faint  for  a  second ;  but  he  kept  on  gal 
lantly.  "That  had  a  kind  of  yellow-fever  taste,  didn't 
it  ?  "  he  gasped  with  unquenchable  levity.  "  Cheer  up, 
the  worst  is  yet  to  come  !  Did  you  see  that  dead  mule 
behind  one  of  the  houses  just  now>?  He  was  very  dead. 
In  fact,  he  must  have  been  quite  entirely  dead  about 
the  week  before  last,  I  should  judge.  Viva  Cuba 
Libre!" 

Military  Post-Office  No.  1  had  a  high  stoop  in  front 
of  it,  that  gave  it  a  queer  likeness  to  the  country  cross 
roads  store  and  post-office  combined  in  a  village  of 
the  same  size  at  home ;  and  two  or  three  loungers  on 
the  porch,  as  our  friends  came  up,  heightened  the 
resemblance.  "How  it  reminds  me  of  that  dear 
Rising  Sun,  Indiana!"  murmured  Schreiber,  tenderly. 
There  were  a  couple  of  privates  waiting,  probably, 
for  their  regimental  mail  to  be  sorted  out,  and  another 
man,  not  a  soldier,  as  he  was  dressed  in  canvas  trousers, 
boots,  and  a  sweater,  was  taking  a  nap  in  informal 
style  stretched  out  on  the  floor,  with  an  arm  across 
his  face.  The  two  orderlies  glanced  at  the  newcomers 
without  curiosity,  and  went  on  with  a  desultory  con 
versation  wherein  war  and  conquest  or  other  trade 
topics  were  not  in  the  least  concerned.  "  --the  first 
time  was  at  a  picnic  given  by  the  Eagles  —  Indepen 
dent  Order  of  Eagles,  y'  know,  they're  pretty  strong 
with  us  —  and  I  couldn't  say  exactly  how  often  since," 
said  one  of  them,  finishing  some  statement ;  and  the 
other  nodded  indifferently. 

"That  fellow  there  lays  like  he  was  dead  —  notice?" 
he  said  presently.  "Guess  he's  about  played  out. 
He's  just  as  still !" 

"Dead  !  Well,  I  reckon  he's  deader  drunk  than  any 
other  kind  of  dead,"  said  the  other  man,  with  a  laugh. 


258  VAN   CLEVE: 

"They  don't  lay  that  way  when  they're  shot,  though 
—  mostly  they  lay  all  kind  of  crumpled  up,  in  my 
experience,"  he  added,  with  the  air  of  a  veteran.  He 
was  a  smooth-chinned  lad  of  twenty-three  or  there 
abouts.  Van  Cleve  and  Schreiber  went  inside.  In  the 
stifling  heat,  two  clerks,  one  in  pajamas  and  the  other 
wearing  an  undershirt,  blue  denim  overalls,  and  a  pair 
of  carpet-slippers  on  his  bare  feet,  were  sorting  mail. 

"Look  in  the  rack.  All  you  fellows'  mail  is  together 
in  one  place  —  right  over  there.  You  can  just  look 
for  yourself,"  one  of  them  answered  the  correspondent 
wearily,  scarcely  glancing  up  from  the  piles  of  letters 
he  was  shuffling  to  and  fro.  Van,  however,  was  not 
expecting  anything ;  nobody  knew  where  he  was.  He 
wanted  to  post  a  letter  he  had  written  to  Lorrie  the 
night  before ;  and  that  done,  hastily  retreated  to  the 
open  air,  wiping  the  perspiration  from  his  face. 

"Hot,  ain't  it?"  said  one  of  the  soldiers,  amiably. 

"I  don't  see  how  those  men  stand  it  in  there.  An 
other  minute  of  that  oven  would  have  finished  me," 
declared  Van. 

Schreiber  came  to  the  door  behind  him  and  said, 
not  without  excitement;  "Look  here,  Kendrick, 
there're  two  letters  there  for  your  friend.  I  saw 
them.  R.  D.  Gilbert  —  that's  he,  isn't  it  ?  His  folks 
must  have  got  on  to  where  to  find  him.  He's  probably 
written." 

"R.  D.  Gilbert?"  said  Van  Cleve,  with  a  start. 
"Then  he's  here,  to  a  certainty.  I  wonder  if  any  of 
them  in  the  post-office  know  him."  He  was  turning 
to  go  inside  again,  when  at  the  second  repetition  of 
the  name,  the  man  on  the  floor  stirred,  rolled  over, 
sat  up  at  last  after  two  or  three  efforts,  staring  around 
with  a  puffy,  reddened  face.  "Whazzat?  What  you 
want?"  said  Bob. 

If  this  meeting  had  occurred  on  the  melodramatic 
stage,  for  which  as  an  incident  it  was  well  suited,  Van 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  259 

Cleve  would  undoubtedly  have  had  to  exclaim:  "My 
God,  Bob!  You  here!"  clutching  his  temples  in  a 
frenzy  of  horrified  astonishment.  The  plain  fact  is, 
he  did  and  said  for  an  instant,  nothing  at  all.  It 
took  him  that  time  to  realize  that  this  was  Bob  —  Bob 
at  last  in  a  worse  state  from  drink  and  hardships  than 
Van  had  ever  seen  him,  gaunt,  disordered,  blear-eyed, 
almost  repulsive.  In  another  moment,  he  perceived 
that  Bob,  although  looking  straight  at  him,  had  not 
yet  recognized  him,  which,  to  be  sure,  was  not  to  be 
wondered  at,  Van  quickly  remembered,  considering 
his  own  appearance  and  that  he  was  the  last  person 
Robert  would  be  expecting  to  see.  Schreiber,  who  also 
had  been  staring  hard,  now  burst  out  with:  "Well, 
I'll  be  —  why,  that's  Gilbert !  Isn't  it  Gilbert  ?  Why, 
that's  him  now!  Well,  I'll  be  —  !"  he  looked  all 
around  helplessly.  Bob  surveyed  him  with  blank 
eyes. 

"Friend  of  yours?"  said  one  of  the  soldiers,  address 
ing  Schreiber. 

"No  —  yes  —  that  is,  here's  his  friend.  This  is 
his  friend.  Been  chasing  him  fifteen  hundred  miles  ! 
Wouldn't  that  jar  you,  though?  Fifteen  hundred 
miles!  And  here  he  is  !" 

"Why,  hello,  Bob  !"  said  Van  Cleve,  mechanically. 
Then  he  collected  himself,  and  made  another  effort. 
"Hello,  Bob,  don't  you  know  me?  It's  Van  Cleve 
Kendrick,  you  know --Van  Cleve,  you  know!"  Un 
consciously  he  raised  his  harsh  voice,  as  he  repeated 
the  name.  Bob  eyed  him  so  dully  and  unresponsively, 
it  made  him  anxious. 

"No  use  hollerin'  at  him,  mister.  Better  let  him 
sleep  it  off,"  observed  one  of  the  privates;  "he's 
pickled  for  fair  !" 

"No,  he  ain't,  he'll  know  you  in  a  minute,"  said  the 
other  with  a  judicial  glance;  "he  knew  when  you 
called  his  name  just  now.  Wake  up,  bo!"  he  con- 


260  VAN  CLEVE: 

tinued  to  Bob,  genially;  "  here's  somebody  come  to  see 
you!" 

This  experienced  gentleman  was  right;  Robert  had 
unquestionably  had  some  liquor,  but  that  he  was 
legitimately  fagged  out  from  exertion,  want  of  sleep, 
and,  very  likely,  want  of  food  would  have  been  evident, 
on  a  closer  inspection,  to  anybody.  He  got  upon 
his  feet,  while  they  were  speaking,  without  any  help, 
looked  hard  at  the  dirty,  bearded  man  in  front  of  him, 
and  ejaculated  at  last  in  his  own  natural  voice,  but 
filled  with  bewilderment :  "Van  Cleve  !  It's  not  you, 
Van?" 

"See?  What'd  I  tell  you?  He's  got  you!"  said 
the  soldier,  triumphantly. 

"How'd  you  get  here?"  said  Bob.  In  the  wonder 
and  perplexity  of  the  moment,  neither  of  them  thought 
of  shaking  hands.  Van  Cleve's  wits,  in  truth,  were 
at  a  standstill;  he  had  never  speculated  much  as  to 
the  precise  environment  and  conditions  wherein  he 
would  find  his  friend,  and  had  no  plans  about  what  he 
was  going  to  say  other  than  to  tell  Bob  plainly  and 
forcibly  that  having  betrayed  a  young  woman  accord 
ing  to  her  own  confession,  he  must  come  home  and 
marry  her.  He  had  not  thought  this  duty  too  hard ; 
it  was  something  that  had  to  be  done,  and,  for  Van 
Cleve,  that  dismissed  all  objections.  What  he  had 
not  allowed  for,  was  such  a  chance  as  this ;  the  open 
beach,  the  crowded,  noisy  camp  where  decent  privacy 
seemed  a  thing  unobtainable,  the  sudden  stumbling 
upon  the  man  he  sought.  He  was  inordinately  taken 
aback.  It  was  only  for  a  second,  but  the  others  looked 
at  him  curiously.  Bob  all  at  once  recognized  Schreiber, 
and  spoke  to  him  by  name,  and  they  two  shook  hands 
enthusiastically.  Robert  pulled  out  a  half-empty  flask 
from  his  hip-pocket,  and  offered  it  all  around,  "Have 
a  drink?  It'll  do  you  good.  Got  to  take  a  little 
stimulant  in  this  climate,  you  know.  I  do  myself  all 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  261 

the  time/7  he  said  frankly ;  "  here's  how,  boys!  What's 
your  regiment?  Oh,  two  regiments?  We'll  have  to 
have  two  drinks  on  that !  What's  yours  ?  Third  ? 
Bully  for  the  Third !  Here,  got  to  drink  to  your 
regiment,  you  know.  What's  yours,  hey  ?  " 

The  second  young  fellow  said,  with  an  uneasy  grin, 
glancing  at  the  others,  that  he  belonged  to  the  Twentieth, 
and  he  didn't  want  any,  thanky,  sir.  Van  Cleve 
interfered.  " You've  had  enough  of  that,  Bob,"  he 
said,  the  exertion  of  authority  restoring  him  to  his 
habitual  poise  on  the  instant ;  "  here,  give  me  the  bottle. 
You  want  something  to  eat,  that's  what  you  want. 
Where  do  you  go  here  ?" 

"Aw,  Van  Cleve  — !"  Bob  began  pleadingly;  but 
he  surrendered  his  flask  without  more  protest.  No 
amount  of  drinking  could  overcome  the  poor  sinner's 
native  gentleness  and  tractability.  "Kind  of  good  to 
see  you,  Van,"  he  said  next  affectionately;  "but  I 
must  say,  you  took  me  by  surprise.  Don't  all  of  us 
look  like  tramps,  though!"  He  cast  a  glance  of 
whimsical  appreciation  over  his  own  figure  and  his 
friend's.  "How'd  you  get  here  ?" 

"Why,  I  — I'll  tell  you  presently.  I'd  like  to  get 
something  to  eat,  first.  Where  do  you  live?  Where 
do  you  go  to  eat  and  sleep,  I  mean?" 

Bob  burst  into  a  laugh,  broken  by  hiccoughs. 
"  Where  do  I  live  ?  Where  do  any  of  us  live  ?  How's 
that,  fellows  ?  Where  do  we  all  live  ?  Why,  in  Cuba, 
first  turn  to  your  left  and  keep  on  going!"  He 
looked  to  Schreiber  for  sympathy.  "What's  your 
address,  Schreib.?" 

"It's  going  to  be  Herman  Schreiber,  Esquire,  The 
Front,  directly,"  said  the  war-correspondent,  himself 
amused.  "He's  about  right,  Kendrick,  you  don't  live, 
nor  eat,  nor  sleep  anywhere  —  you  just  get  along  the 
best  you  can.  What's  doing,  anyhow,  Gil?" 

"At  the  front?    Nothing.     No  fighting,    I   mean. 


262  VAN   CLEVE: 

I  came  back  last  night.  I  was  all  in.  I've  been  trying 
to  get  a  little  rest." 

" Lying  here  on  the  ground?"  Van  said,  thinking 
with  a  certain  shock  of  Mrs.  Gilbert  and  Lorrie.  If 
they  knew  -  -  !  If  they  could  see  him  -  -  !  But, 
thank  Heaven,  they  couldn't ! 

Bob  nodded,  momentarily  speechless  in  a  fit  of 
coughing.  "Sure!  No  place  else  to  go,  you  know," 
he  said  when  he  got  his  breath.  "Why  not?  It's 
what  they  all  do  —  sick  and  wounded  and  all.  What's 
good  enough  for  our  army,  is  good  enough  for  me,  I 
hope." 

Van  Cleve  eyed  him  over  with  a  good  deal  of  secret 
worry.  Under  the  mask  of  dirt  and  sunburn,  and 
apart  from  the  specific  look  of  the  hard  drinker  with 
the  lines  and  hollows  and  unwholesome  textures  that 
Bob's  face  had  begun  to  show  long  ago,  Van  Cleve 
thought  he  detected  some  appearance  graver  still; 
that  cough  and  that  stoop  were  not  due  wholly  to 
privation  and  too  much  whiskey,  he  said  to  himself. 
For  a  flash  he  was  astounded  at  the  alarm  that  gripped 
him.  Bob  was  worthless;  but  he  loved  Bob.  "You 
haven't  had  anything  to  eat  yet?"  he  said  roughly, 
as  usual,  when  he  was  much  moved.  And  the  other, 
shaking  his  head  in  a  renewed  paroxysm  of  coughing, 
Van  took  him  by  the  arm;  "come  along,  we'll  get 
something  —  we'll  hunt  it  up  somewhere,"  he  said. 

They  got  Bob's  mail  —  a  letter  from  his  father,  and 
one  from  Lorrie  with  the  Tampa  postmark,  as  Van 
Cleve  noted  to  his  surprise  —  and  started  off,  the  news 
paper-man,  who  did  not  lack  a  gift  of  tact,  bidding 
them  good-by  pleasantly  and  taking  the  opposite 
direction. 


CHAPTER  VI 

IN    WHICH    WE    WITNESS    A    SURRENDER 

"How  on  earth  did  you  ever  happen  to  hook  up 
with  him  —  Schreiber,  you  know  ?  How  did  you  hap 
pen  to  come  down  here,  anyhow?"  Bob  wanted  to 
know,  in  recurrent  wonder.  "  Think  of  my  not  know 
ing  who  you  were  at  first !  But,  Van,  I  was  simply 
stunned,  I  couldn't  believe  it  was  you."  He  looked 
into  his  friend's  face,  in  sudden  affectionate  anxiety. 
"You  don't  mind,  do  you  ?  My  not  knowing  you  right 
off,  I  mean?  I  thought  you  looked  as  if  you  didn't 
like  it,  for  a  minute.  But  honestly,  Van  Cleve,  I 
couldn't  help  it." 

"Oh,  that's  all  right.  I  don't  think  anything  of 
that.  It  was  perfectly  natural,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
shortly ;  he  was  unconscious  of  the  impatient  note  in 
his  voice,  of  the  scowl  between  his  deep-set  eyes.  The 
thing  he  had  to  do  was  on  his  mind,  and  it  had  all  at 
once  become  hateful  to  him,  utterly  abhorrent.  Robert 
looked  so  sick  and  shaken,  Van  Cleve  wanted  to  take 
care  of  him,  not  to  accuse  and  coerce  him ;  moreover, 
face  to  face,  Bob  seemed,  as  he  always  had  to  his  friend, 
intrinsically  harmless ;  he  wronged  himself  terribly  and 
irretrievably,  but  it  was  hard  to  believe  that  he  could 
wrong  anybody  else.  "Damn  that  girl !"  Van  thought 
angrily;  "if  she's  any  too  good  herself,  I  miss  my 
guess  !  It  would  be  easy  enough  to  lead  Bob  into 
anything,  and  blame  any  trouble  that  came  along  after 
wards  on  him.  He's  a  mark  for  any  woman." 

Bob  was  speaking  again.     "Old  grouch!"  he  said, 

263 


264  VAN   CLEVE: 

thumping  his  friend's  shoulder  caressingly.  "What 
made  you  come  here,  anyhow,  Van  Cleve  ?  Did  you 
just  take  a  notion  you'd  come,  or  how  was  it  ?" 

"Well,  I  —  I  came  after  you  really,  Bob.  The  fam 
ily  want  you  to  come  home." 

"They  know  the  Record-World  fired  me;  I  suppose 
that's  the  reason?"  said  Bob,  with  a  kind  of  amiable 
annoyance. 

"Why,  yes  —  one  reason." 

Bob  began  to  explain  cheerfully.  "I  suppose  they 
had  to  —  the  management,  I  mean.  I  haven't  any 
kick  to  make  about  it.  They're  all  pretty  square 
men,  and  they  did  the  right  thing,  from  their  stand 
point,  to  let  me  out.  I'd  —  I'd  been  drinking.  It's 
hard  to  keep  out  of  it ;  everybody  drinks  more  or  less, 
but  most  of  the  men  get  away  with  it  somehow.  They 
stand  it  better  than  I  do ;  they  can  hold  more  without 
its  affecting  them.  Oh,  well,  I  never  did  much  like 
the  work,  anyhow  —  running  around,  asking  an  in 
fernal  lot  of  questions,  and  prying  into  other  people's 
business ;  it  isn't  much  of  a  gentleman's  job,  seems  to 
me.  I  was  about  ready  to  quit  when  they  notified 
me.  I'm  even  on  the  transaction.  I've  got  the 
experience,  and  that's  all  there  was  in  it  for  me ; 
it'll  be  invaluable  in  anything  else  I  go  into,"  he  con 
cluded  comfortably,  and  dismissed  the  subject.  "But 
I  don't  see  why  you  thought  you  had  to  come  down 
here  after  me,  Van.  You  didn't  need  to  take  all  that 
trouble.  Was  mother  worrying  ?" 

"Well,  you  see  they  didn't  know  where  you  were  or 
what  had  become  of  you." 

"Why,  I  wrote  them.  I  told  them  all  about  it. 
I  told  them  I  was  going  on  with  the  army.  And  then 
I  wrote  again  from  here,  as  soon  as  I  found  out  about 
the  postal  arrangements,  and  told  them  to  address  me 
here." 

"They  hadn't  got  that  letter  when  we  left  home, 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  265 

of  course.     But  they  must  have  since,  for  I  see  Lome's 
written  you  from  Tampa/7  said  Van  Cleve. 

Bob  stared  at  him  in  stark  amazement.  "Lorrie? 
At  Tampa  ?  What's  Lorrie  doing  at  Tampa  ?  They're 
not  all  of  them  there?" 

"No,  just  Lorrie.  She  thought  you  were  there, 
and  she  wanted  to  get  to  you.  I  brought  her.  She 
would  come,"  Van  said,  rather  defensively,  as  he  saw  the 
indignant  surprise  on  the  brother's  face.  Robert 
was  genuinely  shocked.  The  mere  mention  of  Lorrie 
awoke  all  the  manliness  there  was  in  him ;  Lorrie  was 
his  creed  and  his  conscience. 

"Would  come?  What  were  they  thinking  of- 
what  were  you  thinking  of,  to  let  her  come  ?  That's 
no  place  for  our  Lorrie.  Would  come  !  You  talk  as 
if  Lorrie  were  one  of  these  hysterical,  tomfool  women 
that  have  to  be  given  in  to,  or  they'll  go  crazy.  Lome's 
got  sense.  What  did  she  want  to  come  after  me  for?" 
He  stopped ;  and  a  new  expression  came  over  his  face, 
a  look  of  self-forgetful  sympathy  and  tenderness  that 
made  it  beautiful  with  all  the  grime  and  weariness  and 
marks  of  dissipation.  "Oh,  I  see!  It  was  Phil. 
Poor  Lorrie !  You  can't  blame  her  for  that.  She 
wanted  to  be  near  Phil.  Poor  Lorrie!"  All  his 
features  quivered.  "Cort's  dead.  You  knew  that, 
Van  ?  Killed  right  at  the  first  before  he'd  had  a  chance 
to  do  anything  —  poor  Cort !  He  was  the  best  fellow. 
I  know  you  never  liked  him,  but  you  didn't  know  him. 
Cort  was  a  splendid  fellow." 

"I'm  sorry  for  Lorrie  just  the  same,"  said  Van 
Cleve. 

"Is  she  —  does  she  know  ?     How  is  she ? " 

Van  Cleve  shook  his  head  gravely.  "Don't  ask, 
Bob.  It's  the  saddest  thing  I  ever  saw.  Yes,  she 
heard  it  one  of  the  first."  He  described  the  Tampa 
experiences  briefly.  "The  uncertainty  was  cruelly 
hard  on  her.  But  of  course,  that's  all  over  now." 


266  VAN  CLEVE: 

Bob  said,  "Yes,  it's  all  over,"  and  passed  the  back 
of  his  hand  across  his  eyes.  After  a  moment  of  striving 
to  get  his  voice  under  control,  he  managed  to  add : 
"You  know  I  saw  it,  Van  Cleve.  I  saw  him  after  he 
was  shot." 

"You  did!" 

The  other  nodded,  twisting  his  lips  as  if  in  bodily 
pain  at  the  mere  recollection.  "Yes.  Oh,  my  God, 
cruel  things  happen  in  war !  Yes,  I  saw  it.  I  wasn't 
up  in  front  where  he  was  when  the  fighting  began.  I 
was  coming  along  behind,  with  another  fellow  — 
another  newspaper-man,  I  mean.  I  don't  know  who 
he  was.  I  suppose  we  must  have  been  a  couple  of 
hundred  yards  behind  the  nearest  soldiers.  They 
marched  in  two  lots  —  two  divisions,  you  know, 
some  of  them  straight  up  this  ravine  (you  come  to  the 
Santiago  road  that  way  directly)  and  Wood's  men, 
the  Rough  Riders  (only  they  didn't  have  any  horses) 
went  up  that  steep  place,  past  the  blockhouse  —  that 
one  over  there  to  your  left  —  you're  looking  the  wrong 
direction.  I  followed  them.  It  was  terribly  hot. 
Sometimes  when  we  got  to  one  of  those  little  narrow 
places,  all  walled  in  with  trees  and  vines  grown  up 
solid  on  both  sides,  it  was  like  being  at  the  bottom  of 
some  kind  of  red-hot  well.  It  made  your  head  swim. 
Some  of  the  men  fainted.  When  there  began  to  be 
firing  in  front,  the  men  got  an  order  to  move  faster. 
You  never  would  have  called  it  a  charge ;  it  wasn't  any 
thing  like  the  things  you  read  about  in  books.  They 
-  they  just  walked  along  a  little  faster.  When  we 
caught  up  with  them  I  saw  one  man  near  me  get  his 
sleeve  hooked  on  a  thorn,  and  he  stopped  to  pull  it 
away,  and  scratched  his  finger  and  said  'Damn!'  and 
stuck  it  in  his  mouth  !  All  the  time  the  firing  was 
going  on  in  front." 

"They  said  Cortwright  and  those  other  men  were 
killed  at  the  first  fire,"  Van  Cleve  interrupted  him. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  267 

"Yes,  I  know.  I  worked  off  to  the  side  somehow. 
You  couldn't  see  a  thing,  you  know.  The  bushes 
were  full  of  men  spread  out  trying  to  get  through.  I 
don't  believe  any  of  them  knew  where  they  were  any 
more  than  I  did,  after  a  little  while.  They  just  kept 
going  towards  where  you  could  hear  the  guns.  The 
whole  thing  only  lasted  an  hour,  about.  Cort  didn't 
die  right  off ;  some  of  them  were  shot  dead  where  they 
stood,  but  he  wasn't.  They  lifted  him  out  of  the  way 
over  into  some  of  the  bushes.  It  was  just  the  way  you 
sometimes  see  a  dead  cat  in  an  alley  at  home,  stuck 
over  in  the  gutter  till  the  street-cleaners  come  and 
get  it.  They  couldn't  help  it ;  they  couldn't  stop  to 
see  about  dying  men;  they  just  had  to  get  him  out 
of  the  road  and  keep  on.  Cruel  things  happen  in 


war." 


Bob  paused,  his  face  working.  He  began  again : 
"I  didn't  know  about  Cortwright  until  I  walked 
on  to  him  almost.  You  don't  know  anything  that's 
happening  anywhere  in  a  battle  except  right  where 
you  are.  I  almost  walked  on  to  him."  Bob  stopped 
again;  he  swallowed,  and  wiped  the  sweat  from  his 
face.  "He  was  lying  there  breathing  with  a  —  with 
a  thick  sound,  and  his  eyes  half-closed  showing  the 
whites,  and  his  face  all  gray.  He  used  to  be  so  good- 
looking  and  —  and  rather  vain  of  his  looks,  too,  you 
recollect,  Van ;  any  man  would  have  been.  And  he 
looked  so  you  didn't  w^ant  to  touch  him.  That's 
horrible,  but  it's  so.  I  got  over  that,  though,  and  went 
and  raised  him  up.  I  don't  know  whether  he  knew  me 
or  not,  but  he  looked  at  me.  I  said,  'It's  me;  it's 
Bob  Gilbert,  Corty,  don't  you  know  me?'  but  he  just 
said  in  a  whisper,  'I'm  thirsty.'  And  then  I  gave  him 
a  drink  out  of  a  canteen  I  had,  and  he  s-said,  'Th- 
thank  you!"  Bob  broke  down  and  sobbed  openly. 
"He  was  dying,  Van ;  he  was  dying,  and  he  said  'Thank 
you  ! ' ' 


268  VAN   CLEVE: 

"Poor  fellow  !"  said  Van,  touched.     " Was  that  all  ?" 

"Yes.  He  died.  He  never  said  another  word.  I 
wish  he  had.  If  he'd  said  Lome's  name,  I'd  like  to 
have  told  her.  But  he  never  spoke  again." 

There  was  a  silence  while  Bob  wiped  his  eyes  on  the 
sleeve  of  his  soiled  shirt,  and  Van  Cleve  stared  ab 
stractedly  at  the  glaring  beach  and  sea.  "Well,  a 
man  can  die  but  once,"  said  the  latter  at  last;  "I 
suppose  getting  shot's  as  good  a  way  as  there  is,  when 
all's  said  and  done.  It's  quick,  anyhow.  I  don't 
believe  he  could  have  suffered  much." 

"You  —  you  couldn't  let  me  have  a  drink  of  the 
whiskey  now,  could  you,  Van?  I'm  pretty  well  used 
up,"  said  Bob,  pitifully. 

"Whiskey  wouldn't  do  you  any  good,"  said  Van 
Cleve,  unmoved.  They  had  found  a  temporary  rest 
ing-place  in  the  lee  of  what  looked  like  a  heap  of  lumber 
and  scrap-iron,  but  was  in  reality  a  collection  of  wagons, 
" knocked  down"  in  sections  and  roughly  bundled  to 
gether  for  transportation.  And  now  a  military-looking 
person  came  and  ordered  them  away  from  it  with  few 
words  and  strong.  Nevertheless,  Van  Cleve  had  the 
courage  to  inquire  of  him  where  food  might  be  got. 
Robert  had  no  money  left,  it  appeared  ;  he  had  nothing 
at  all  except  the  clothes  on  his  back,  and  as  he  patheti 
cally  stated,  some  few  of  poor  Cort's  things,  his  watch 
and  a  little  bundle  of  letters  which  Bob  had  taken  off 
the  body  to  give  to  Lorrie.  "They  buried  him  there 
close  to  where  he  was  killed,  like  all  the  rest,"  he  sighed. 
Van  got  out  his  wallet  and  gave  him  five  dollars. 

"Now  look  here,  you'd  better  not  stir  around  in  this 
sun  any  more  than  you  can  help,"  he  said  with  his 
practical  kindness;  "you  stay  near  this  place,  while  I 
go  and  see  about  the  stuff  to  eat.  In  case  anybody 
comes  along  with  crackers  or  bananas,  you  might  buy 
something  without  waiting  for  me,  only  you  ought  to 
be  pretty  careful,  I  think,"  and  went  off. 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  269 

Alas,  when  he  returned  in  half  an  hour  or  so  with 
his  supplies,  Robert  was  nowhere  in  sight ;  and  Van 
Cleve  with  gloomy  forebodings  which  should  have 
visited  him  earlier,  after  another  half-hour  of  worried 
search,  found  the  other  as  he  had  expected,  in  com 
pany  with  a  villainous-eyed  Cuban,  quite  drunk  and 
happy  in  a  nook  of  sand  and  scrub-palms,  passing  a 
newly  acquired  bottle  back  and  forth.  Bob  had 
forgot  all  about  "poor  Cort,"  all  about  Lorrie,  all 
about  his  own  late  reverses  and  adventures  in  this 
stimulating  companionship ;  he  hailed  Van  Cleve 
jovially.  The  Cuban,  however,  who  was  not  in  the 
least  drunk,  looked  upon  the  arrival  of  this  body 
guard  with  a  very  darkling  countenance;  and  as 
Van  attempted  to  get  Bob  away,  intervened  with  what 
sounded  like  evil  words  in  Spanish,  and  what  certainly 
was  an  evil  expression. 

"Get  out  of  the  way,  you  !"  says  Van  Cleve,  pushing 
Bob  (who,  as  always,  was  perfectly  amiable  and  obe 
dient)  along  in  front  of  him.  "Come  on,  Bob.  Yes, 
I  know  —  it's  all  right,  old  fellow,  but  you  want  to 
come  with  me,  you  know,  now.  Get  out,  you  !  Huh, 
you  would,  would  you?  Well,  I  guess  not!  Not 
this  time,  anyway  !" 

The  Cuban  picked  himself  up,  and  fled  with  a  yowl 
of  malediction. 

"  'S  right,  knock  him  (hie)  down,  Van!"  said  Bob, 
gravely  wagging  his  head  in  approval;    " Cubans  - 
he  flapped  his  hand  —  "Cubans  no  good.     Only  ought 
be  careful,  Van.     Ought  t'have  gun." 

Van  Cleve  clapped  his  hip-pocket.  "Good  Lord,  I 
forgot  all  about  it !"  he  ejaculated. 

The  next  problem  was  to  see  Bob  safely  bestowed 
somewhere,  out  of  reach,  if  possible,  of  any  more  sym 
pathetic  natives  or  brother- Americans ;  and  in  this 
extremity  Van  bethought  him  of  the  Milton  D.  Bowers. 
There  she  lay,  two  or  three  hundred  yards  out,  peace- 


270  VAN  CLEVE: 

ful  and  secure;  and  Captain  Bowers  made  only  one 
comment  when  the  boat  came  alongside  and  they 
helped  Robert  aboard.  "  Found  yer  friend,  I  see. 
He's  got  a  pretty  good  load/'  he  remarked,  turned  his 
quid  reflectively,  spat  into  the  water,  and  inquired : 
"He's  the  one  you  were  figurin'  on  takin'  back  to  the 
States,  I  presume  likely?" 

"Yes,"  said  Van  Cleve. 

"On  the  Milton  D.f"  the  captain  asked,  stroking 
his  chin-beard. 

"That's  what  I  intend  to  do,"  said  Van. 

It  is  a  pity  that  no  reliable  witness  was  at  hand  to 
report  the  battle  of  giants  that  ensued.  Captain 
Bowers  was  a  Connecticut  Yankee ;  Van  Cleve  was  his 
grandfather's  grandson ;  it  must  have  been  a  hot  en 
gagement.  Van  has  never,  naturally,  been  at  all  com 
municative  about  the  episode,  but  one  may  conjecture 
it  to  have  ended  in  a  draw.  "Oh,  yes,  he  stuck  me. 
But  he  didn't  stick  me  as  much  as  he  expected,"  Mr. 
Kendrick  has  been  heard  to  acknowledge.  The  Gil 
berts,  I  think,  know  nothing  about  the  transaction  to 
this  day. 

After  all  these  events,  and  when  he  had  left  Bob 
stertorously  sleeping  in  the  cabin,  Van  Cleve,  who  had 
vaguely  looked  for  the  sun  to  be  setting,  found  to  his 
astonishment  that  it  was  barely  noon !  There  had 
been  no  chance  to  say  a  word  about  the  real  cause  of 
his  visit ;  it  would  have  been  worse  than  useless  to 
attempt  the  subject  in  Bob's  present  condition.  And, 
having  by  this  time  reached  a  more  philosophical  mood 
about  it,  Van  decided  that  the  miserable  affair  might 
wait  till  the  next  day,  without  harm.  By  to-morrow 
Bob  would  be  at  any  rate  sober,  and  fit  to  listen. 
"His  nerves  can't  suffer  by  it,"  thought  Van,  grimly; 
"they're  all  gone  to  pieces  anyhow.  He  hasn't  any 
constitution  left.  He'll  probably  have  to  go  to  Colorado 
or  Arizona  or  somewhere  to  keep  alive.  I  don't  know 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  271 

how  the  family  will  manage.  Some  people  certainly 
do  have  a  hard  time."  For  his  own  part,  he  felt  a 
sense  of  release,  now  that  his  errand  was  all  but  done. 
He  wrote  another  note  to  Lorrie,  briefly  reciting  that 
he  had  found  her  brother  and  was  bringing  him  home ; 
that  Bob  was  in  "  fairly  good  shape,  though  looking 
rather  tough,  like  everybody  else  down  here."  He 
hoped  she  was  all  right,  and  she  must  not  worry, 
that  everything  was  going  along  as  smoothly  as  they 
could  possibly  expect ;  and  as  near  as  he  could  calculate 
just  now,  they  would  arrive  at  Tampa  by  Saturday  or 
Monday  at  farthest;  it  couldn't  take  more  than  a 
week. 

He  went  ashore  again  to  post  this;  and  wandering 
about  fell  in  with  and  followed  for  some  distance  a 
string  of  pack  mules  taking  supplies  to  the  front ; 
much  of  the  road,  it  seemed,  was  almost  impassable  for 
wagons,  although  our  engineers  had  widened  and  built 
it  up  in  many  places.  It  was  nearly  all  as  Bob  had 
described  it,  sunken  between  solid  walls  of  greenery, 
suffocatingly  hot,  and,  until  they  began  to  climb  the 
higher  ground,  steaming  with  noisome  odors.  He 
walked  along  by  one  of  the  drivers,  who,  seeing  that 
he  was  feeling  the  heat,  offered  him  a  drink  out  of  his 
canteen,  which  Van  accepted  gratefully;  he  had  not 
thought  to  provide  himself  with  water.  They  got  into 
talk.  The  teamster  had  been  picked  up  by  the  army 
at  Mobile,  being  a  graduate  of  one  of  the  old, 
well-established  academies  of  mule-driving  to  be  found 
along  the  levees  at  Memphis  and  New  Orleans,  or  in 
deed  almost  anywhere  throughout  the  southern  States ; 
he  said  that  he  liked  it  " first  rate,"  and  reckoned  he'd 
stick  with  the  job  as  long  as  Colonel  Humphries  had 
any  use  for  him.  He  was,  in  fact,  quite  open  and 
sincere  in  a  conviction  that  his  department  was  the 
most  valuable  and  indispensable  in  the  entire  army,  of 
which  he  considered  himself  and  his  mules  as  much  a 


272  VAN   CLEVE: 

part  as  any  regiment,  brigade,  or  division ;  and  confided 
to  Van  Cleve  that  old  Pete,  his  mainstay,  that  there 
big  gray  mule  with  that  there  scar  on  the  flank,  had 
been  a  little  off  his  feed  here  lately ;  he  was  afraid  the 
climate  was  "getting  to  him"  ;  the  trip  in  the  transport 
hadn't  done  none  of  the  mules  no  good.  "If  Pete  er 
me  was  to  be  laid  up  with  th'  sun  er  fever  er  any  thin', 
I  dunno  what  they'd  do  —  be  doggoned  if  I  know 
what  they'd  do  !"  he  said  seriously.  It  appeared  there 
were  none  too  many  of  either  mules  or  packers.  Van 
Cleve,  if  he  was  a  little  amused,  rather  liked  him  for 
this  honest  and  simple  point  of  view.  "That's  the 
way  men  ought  to  feel  that  are  trying  to  do  a  big 
thing  together;  every  one  as  if  his  particular  part  of 
the  job  was  the  biggest  of  all,"  he  thought. 

His  new  acquaintance,  in  a  week  of  traversing  the 
Daiquiri  and  Siboney  roads,  backwards  and  forwards, 
had  learned  the  country-side  by  heart,  and  knew  the 
location  of  every  body  of  troops  as  well  as  the 
commanding  general  himself.  "Here's  whar  they  had 
the  first  scrimmage.  You-all  heerd  about  that,  I 
reckon,"  he  said  as  they  reached  the  summit  of  one  of 
the  ridges;  and,  halting  to  breathe  the  mules,  he 
pointed  out  to  Van  Cleve  the  entrance  of  the  mesa 
trail  where  Wood's  men  had  joined  the  others,  and  a 
shallow  depression  on  one  hand  carpeted  with  cartridge 
shells  in  ominous  profusion.  "They  must  'a'  had  it 
hot  'n'  heavy  right  thar,"  he  opined.  But,  for  that 
matter,  the  jungle  floor  and  pathways  were  now  every 
where  littered  with  grim  reminders  of  the  fight,  rot 
ting  rags  of  bandages,  bits  of  clothing,  and  wrecked 
stretchers.  Van  picked  up  one  of  the  shells  and  put  it 
in  his  pocket. 

"They  buried  some  man  yonder,  I  see,"  he  said, 
nodding  toward  a  long  mound  near  by. 

"Buried  a  dozen  er  more  of  'em  all  in  th'  one  hole," 
said  the  teamster.  "They  didn't  have  time  to  mark 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  273 

their  names   down,   mebbe   they    didn't    even    know 

Van  Cleve  went  and  looked  down  at  the  mound 
whereon  some  of  the  dead  men's  fellows  had  raked 
together  a  few  stones  in  the  shape  of  a  cross.  The 
sight  of  the  poor  tribute  moved  the  young  man  strongly ; 
he  took  off  his  hat  as  he  stood.  Already  the  rank 
jungle  was  creeping  upon  the  grave,  effacing  it.  Van 
Cleve  wondered  if  Cortwright  lay  there.  Cruel  things 
happen  in  war. 

Some  way  farther  on  they  came  to  another  crest, 
and  suddenly  for  the  first  time  the  road  and  surround 
ing  country  opened  in  front  of  them ;  across  the  im 
mediate  valley  was  what  looked  like  a  mammoth  green 
field,  hills,  a  little  shining  patch  of  water,  roads  thread 
ing  this  way  and  that.  Tents  could  be  seen,  and 
clusters  of  black  dots,  some  of  which  moved  apparently 
an  inch  or  so  while  Van  watched  them ;  but  mostly  it 
was  very  still.  It  was  not  merely  that  there  were  no 
martial  sights  and  sounds  such  as  Van  Cleve  found  he 
had  been  half  expecting,  —  there  was  nothing ;  the  peace 
of  harvest  time  at  home  was  not  more  quiet  and  urbane. 
He  could  have  believed  the  landscape  motionless  in  an 
enchantment. 

"That's  the  city  over  thar,  cap. — Santiago,  y'  know," 
said  the  driver,  pointing  with  his  whip  to  some  faintly 
visible  buildings,  pink  and  dust  colored,  on  the  farther 
rim  of  the  valley,  as  it  seemed;  "hey?  Why,  about 
seven  or  eight  mile,  I  judge.  This  side,  kinder  frontin' 
to  you,  is  San  Juan  Hill,  whar  they  fit  the  other  day." 

"Do  you  mean  that  little  bare  spot  over  there? 
Is  that  a  hill  ?  I  thought  San  Juan  was  a  high  place," 
said  Van  Cleve,  in  surprise. 

"It  were  high  enough,"  said  the  teamster,  with  a 
tinge  of  offence;  but  he  relented  directly,  seeing  that 
Van  had  had  no  idea  of  belittling  the  army's  achieve 
ment;  and  showed  him  where  to  look  for  the  earth- 


274  VAN  CLEVE: 

works  and  blockhouses,  and  in  what  direction  lay 
Caney,  where  there  had  been  the  bitter  struggle  last 
Friday.  He  could  name  some  of  the  groups  of  tents 
and  black  dots.  "Gin'ral  Wheeler's  division  is  right 
square  acrost  from  us  —  less'n  they've  moved  since 
yestiddy  morning.  A  division  is  jest  one  lot  o'  men, 
you  know,"  he  explained  carefully;  "'tain't  all  the 
army.  Thar's  a  whole  passel  more  with  Gin'ral  Kent 
round  here  kinder  quarterin'  to  yer  left,  and  some  'way 
over  on  the  other  side.  You  can't  see  one  or  t'other 
of  'em  from  here.  But  headquarters  is  down  this  side 
tol'ble  near  whar  we  air  now ;  if  you  step  this  way  a 
little,  you  kin  see  th'  flag." 

"It's  about  ninety  per  cent  safer  than  where  General 
Wheeler  is,  I  should  say,"  commented  Van  Cleve, 
having,  after  repeated  directions,  at  last  located  the 
spot,  a  great  deal  closer  than  he  had  supposed.  "Is 
the  commanding  general  always  that  handy  to  the 
rear?" 

"Well,  he's  got  ter  kinder  stay  put,  ye  know.  He's 
got  to  be  alluz  in  th7  one  place  so's  they'll  know  whar 
to  find  him.  And  up  in  front,  ye  just  nachelly  can't 
stay  in  one  place,"  the  muleteer  suggested,  making 
ready  to  move  on.  "You  Pete,  you  dig  right  out, 
now,  you  ol'  -  -  !"  he  addressed  his  convoy  with  much 
affectionate  profanity.  As  it  had  taken  them  upwards 
of  three  hours  to  reach  this  point,  Van  thought  that  he 
himself  had  better  return  before  night  caught  him  on 
the  road ;  and  two  wagonloads  of  sick  and  wounded  on 
their  way  to  the  hospital  at  Siboney  coming  along  just 
then,  he  joined  them.  He  was  keenly  curious,  and 
indeed  promised  himself  to  view  the  battle-field  nearer, 
but  did  not  have  another  chance.  It  was  Van's  fate 
to  see  the  war  throughout  from  its  reverse  side,  to  miss 
all  its  hideous  splendors,  to  encounter  none  of  its 
heroes.  In  a  romance  of  any  pretensions,  Mr.  Kendrick 
would  by  this  time  have  been  hand-in-glove  with  all 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  275 

the  celebrities  on  the  field,  and  would,  for  his  own 
part,  have  contributed  dazzlingly  to  our  successes. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  during  the  whole  of  his  desul 
tory  adventures,  and  among  the  numerous  companions 
whom  he  picked  up  at  random  for  a  day  or  an  hour, 
Van  Cleve  never  spoke  to  anybody  above  the  rank  of  a 
private,  and  saw  and  did  nothing  sensational. 

When  he  came  aboard,  the  cook  reported  that  his 
friend  had  been  a  mite  restive,  although  he  was  asleep 
again  now.  "Wouldn't  wonder  if  he  was  jest  about 
on  the  edge  of  seein'  'em  —  pink  rats  and  such/'  he 
remarked,  not  without  some  pleasant  excitement.  And 
he  kindly  volunteered  to  sit  up  in  case  Van  wanted 
help  through  the  night.  "I've  had  experience,"  he 
said,  which  indeed  was  highly  likely.  But  fortunately 
these  extreme  measures  were  not  necessary.  Van 
Cleve  went  sound  asleep,  rolled  up  in  his  blanket  on 
the  deck.  And  when  he  waked  up  in  the  morning, 
with  a  start  and  the  sensation  of  something  unfinished 
and  impending,  which  had  got  to  be  habitual  with  him 
these  last  three  weeks,  Bob  himself  was  the  first  per 
son  he  saw. 

The  poor  fellow  was  completely  sobered  by  now,  and 
had  got  up  and  bathed  and  straightened  his  hair  and 
clothing  as  best  he  might ;  and  sat  by  Van  Cleve,  evi 
dently  watching  and  waiting  for  him  to  wake,  with  a 
grave  and  patient  air.  He  smiled  eagerly  as  their 
eyes  met ;  Van  Cleve  put  out  his  hand,  and  the  other 
slid  his  own  cold  and  shaking  one  into  it  with  a  con 
fiding  gesture  like  a  child.  "Top  o'  the  morning,  sir  !" 
he  said,  and  coughed.  He  had  to  take  away  his  hand 
and  clasp  it  against  his  chest  in  a  fit  of  coughing. 

Van  Cleve  did  not  speak  for  a  moment.  He  was 
thinking,  inconsequently  enough,  that  in  all  their  in 
timacy  he  could  not  remember  ever  to  have  heard  Bob 
tell  a  foul  story ;  even  at  his  worst  and  lowest,  even 
drunk  and  lying  in  the  gutter,  there  had  always  been  a 


276  VAN  CLEVE: 

kind  of  decency  about  Bob.  It  must  be  mental,  see 
ing  that  it  could  be  neither  moral  nor  physical ;  but 
could  a  man 's  mind  be  clean,  when  soul  and  body  were 
so  debased?  While  he  was  considering  this  paradox, 
Bob  began  to  speak  again. 

11  Just  as  soon  as  you're  up  and  have  had  your  break 
fast,  Van,  there's  something  I'd  like  to  talk  to  you 
about,"  he  said,  with  an  earnestness  that  sat  strangely 
on  him  who  was  by  nature  so  irresponsible;  "I've 
read  those  letters  from  Lorrie  and  Father  —  I  can't 
make  'em  out  —  they're  so  solemn  and  mysterious, 
begging  me  to  do  my  duty,  and  come  home  with  you, 
and  all  that,  just  as  if  they  expected  I'd  make  a  row 
about  it.  What  would  I  be  doing  that  for?  I'd  just 
as  soon  go  home  as  not.  I've  seen  all  I  want  to. 
Lome's  letter  is  all  wild  and  hysterical  anyhow  —  poor 
girl !  She's  about  heart  broken."  The  ready  tears 
came  into  Bob's  eyes.  "Why,  of  course  I'm  coming 
home  with  you.  I'd  go  back  on  Lome's  account  any 
how.  She  wants  to  know  all  about  Cort."  Bob's 
face  grew  grave  again.  He  fingered  the  letters  which 
were  spread  open  on  his  knees.  "There's  something 
else  I've  got  to  tell  you  —  to  ask  you  about,  I  mean. 
It's  important.  But  you  go  ahead  and  get  freshened 
up  first.  There's  coffee ;  shan't  I  get  you  some  coffee  ?  " 

Van  Cleve  thought  reluctantly  :  "It's  come!  He's 
going  to  own  up  the  whole  thing  to  me  !"  Aloud  he 
said,  "No,  never  mind  the  coffee,  Bob,  let's  have  it 
out  now.  Might  as  well  tell  me  and  get  it  done  and 
over  with." 

The  other  hung  his  head,  fumbling  with  the  letters. 
"It  —  it's  not  so  easy,  Van,"  he  said  huskily;  "if  it 
were  just  about  myself,  I  wouldn't  mind,  but  it's  some 
body  else  —  another  person,  you  know  - 

Van  Cleve  thought  it  the  part  of  wisdom,  perhaps 
the  best  kindness,  not  to  help  him  out  with  any  hint 
of  understanding ;  an  honest  confession  is  good  for  the 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  277 

soul.  He  waited  ;  and,  at  last,  seeing  that  Bob  seemed 
unable  to  get  a  step  farther,  said  casually;  "Is  that 
Lome's  letter  you've  got  there  ?  I've  written  already 
to  tell  her  we  are  starting  home." 

"No,  no,  these  are  Cort's.  The  ones  I  was  going 
to  take  to  Lorrie,  you  know.  This  was  my  first  chance 
to  look  them  over,"  Bob  said ;  and  noting  surprise  on 
his  friend's  face,  he  added  quickly  and  defensively : 
"why,  I  had  to  read  them,  you  know,  Van;  I  had  to 
find  out  what  weren't  worth  taking  to  her,  so  I  could 
destroy  them.  We  haven't  got  any  room  to  be  carry 
ing  letters  around,  and  I  thought  there  was  no  use 
taking  her  a  lot  of  laundry  bills  and  things  like  that." 

"All  right  —  I  understand,"  said  Van,  almost  amused. 

"I  wouldn't  read  other  people's  letters  unless  I  had 
to,"  said  Bob,  hotly. 

"To  be  sure,  it's  a  point  of  honor,"  Van  Cleve  agreed 
in  his  driest  tone ;  and  as  the  other  looked  at  him, 
puzzled,  he  said  harshly :  "go  on,  Bob,  what  is  it  you 
want  to  tell  me  ?  Go  on,  man  !  No  use  shilly-shallying. 
Everything  always  gets  known  first  or  last  anyhow." 

' l  Why,  Van  Cleve,  you  —  you  act  as  if  —  you  talk 
as  if  you  knew  —  or  as  if  you  suspected  something 
already  !"  Bob  stammered,  aghast. 

"I  know  about  you  and  Paula  Jameson,  if  that's 
what  you're  trying  to  tell  me,"  said  Van  Cleve,  out  of 
patience. 

At  the  sound  of  that  name,  an  unhealthy  flush  in 
vaded  the  unhealthy  pallor  of  Bob's  face ;  but  he  was 
silent,  staring  at  his  friend  unseeingly.  Van  judged 
him  to  be  stupefied  with  astonishment  at  the  sudden 
uncovering  of  the  disgrace.  Shame,  regret,  alarm,  a 
dozen  feelings  Van  thought  he  could  read  in  the  other's 
changing  and  confused  expression. 

"That's  what  your  father  and  Lorrie  meant  by  the 
way  they  wrote,  Bob,"  he  said,  poignantly  ashamed 
himself,  and  hurrying  through  his  explanations ;  "that's 


278  VAN   CLEVE: 

the  real  reason  I'm  here  after  you.  Lorrie  would  have 
come  by  herself,  only  I  stopped  her  —  I  made  her  stay 
at  Tampa.  Everything's  come  out.  It  was  bound  to 
come  out  from  the  start.  I  —  I  don't  exactly  blame 
you,  Bob  —  I  mean  I  don't  think  you're  utterly  lost 
and  abandoned  because  you  and  she  —  the  girl,  you 
know  —  sort  of  let  go  of  yourselves  —  it  was  foolish, 
but  it  —  it  -  '  Van  Cleve  floundered  a  moment,  con 
fused  at  the  inadequacy  of  his  own  words  —  "it's  all 
got  to  be  straightened  out,  anyhow.  They  want  you 
to  go  home  and  marry  her  and  make  it  up  to  her  the 
best  you  can  -  "he  halted,  struck  by  a  sudden  doubt 
that  Bob  had  understood  all  that  he  said,  or  even 
heard  it  all.  The  abruptness  of  the  attack  (to  call  it 
that)  seemed  to  have  a  little  dazed  him. 

"  You  know  all  about  me  and  Paula  Jameson  ?  "  Bob 
repeated,  as  if  nothing  after  that  had  conveyed  any 
meaning  to  him. 

"Yes,  you  and  Paula  Jameson."  Van  Cleve  went 
all  over  what  he  had  already  said,  with  more  delibera 
tion  and  insistence;  as  he  talked  he  noticed  with 
anxiety  that  Bob's  features  faded  gradually  to  a  leaden 
hue,  lips  and  all.  "I  ought  to  be  careful.  He  looks 
like  a  corpse  !"  thought  Van,  frightened,  and  broke 
off.  "Are  you  —  are  you  all  right,  Bob  ?  You  —  you 
don't  —  you  aren't  going  to  be  sick?"  he  stammered. 

Bob  put  up  his  hand  to  his  forehead.  "I'm  all 
right,"  he  said  vaguely. 

"You  had  to  know,  and  I  had  to  tell  you.  Nobody 
can  ever  dodge  anything  like  that.  It'll  come  out 
some  day  in  spite  of  you.  You  might  have  known 
that,  Bob,"  Van  Cleve  reiterated. 

"I  —  I  suppose  so."  However  much  Bob  had  been 
startled,  he  did  not  faint  nor  go  into  some  kind  of  fit, 
as  his  friend  had  momentarily  feared ;  neither,  to  Van's 
infinite  relief,  did  he  begin  a  clamorous  denial  of  guilt. 
Rather  he  seemed  to  be  painfully  adjusting  his  mind  to 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  279 

a  comprehensive  view  of  the  situation.  And  at  last  he 
said:  " Who  told  you ?" 

Van  Cleve  told  him.  He  described  all  the  circum 
stances,  as  he  had  seen  them,  leading  up  to  the  un 
happy  disclosure;  and  how  he  himself  came  to  bear 
some  part  in  it.  Bob  listened  to  him  with  an  extraor 
dinary  immobility;  he  did  not  give  the  impression  of 
being  callous  or  indifferent ;  on  the  contrary,  he  ap 
peared  to  Van  Cleve  to  be  bending  his  whole  energies 
merely  to  understanding  the  story.  He  interrupted 
only  once  when  he  asked  :  "Did  you  see  Paula?  Did 
she  tell  you?" 

' '  Me !  No  ! "  ej  aculated  Van  Cleve,  horrified ;  ' '  she 
wouldn't  be  talking  to  me  about  it.  I  hope  to  the 
Lord  the  poor  girl  doesn't  know  I've  got  a  thing  to  do 
with  it !  No,  as  I  understood  it,  she  didn't  want  to 
blame  anybody,  but  her  mother  got  it  out  of  her  some 
how." 

He  went  on  talking ;  and  at  the  end,  although  Van 
had  pictured  as  forcibly  as  he  could  the  attitude  of  the 
family,  which  was  surely  also  the  attitude  of  every 
right-minded  person,  Robert  said,  with  the  same  ques 
tioning  air  as  before  :  - 

"They  want  me  to  marry  her?" 

"  Why,  good  God,  Bob,  what  else  ?  That's  the  only 
way  you  can  square  things.  You  know  what  the 
world  is.  You  know  how  it  would  treat  that  girl, 
even  if  any  decent  person  would  ever  speak  to  you 
afterwards.  You  can't  let  her  pay  the  score  all  by 
herself.  That's  not  fair.  And,  Bob,  I  know  you're 
fair ;  I  know  you'll  always  take  what's  coming  to  you. 
I  told  you  before,  I  don't  blame  the  whole  of  it  on  you. 
There's  a  lot  of  rot  talked  about  men  deceiving  girls, 
and  taking  advantage  of  their  innocence,  and  all  that. 
It's  a  partnership  business,  in  my  opinion  —  six  of 
one,  half  a  dozen  of  the  other.  But  that  doesn't  let 
you  off.  You  —  you  see  there's  going  to  be  a  child, 


280  VAN   CLEVE: 

Bob  —  I  suppose  you  didn't  take  that  in  while  I  was 
talking  just  now,  but  that's  what's  the  main  trouble. 
Of  course  you  couldn't  know  that." 

"  Yes,  I  knew  it.  I  guessed  at  it,  that  is,"  said  Bob, 
looking  down,  sorting  his  letters  out  and  bundling  them 
together  again,  first  in  one  packet,  then  in  another, 
with  mechanical  movements. 

"What?     Before  you  went  away?" 

"No,  not  before  I  went  away." 

"She  must  have  written  to  him,"  Van  Cleve  thought, 
with  a  mixture  of  pity  and  disgust;  and  for  the  first 
time  he  looked  at  the  other  in  pure  contempt.  Faugh, 
the  sorry  creature  that  Bob  was!  "Well,  then,  you 
see  you've  got  to  come  home,  Bob,"  he  said. 

"I  —  I  wish  I  could  see  Lorrie  —  I  wish  Lorrie  was 
here  !"  said  Bob,  weakly. 

Van  Cleve  got  up  with  an  oath.  "By  — !  Bob 
Gilbert,  you  make  me  sick  !"  he  said  savagely.  "Lor 
rie!  You  brought  this  shameful  trouble  on  yourself, 
and  now  you  want  to  go  whining  to  Lorrie  and  load 
her  up  with  it.  Lorrie!  Hasn't  she  got  enough  to 
stand  already  ?  The  man  she  loved  is  dead,  shot  down 
and  buried  like  a  dog  in  this  God-forsaken  hole,  and 
the  best  you  can  do  for  her  is  to  wish  she  were  here 
to  help  you  out !  Hasn't  she  done  enough  for  you, 
you  that  she's  dragged  out  of  the  gutters,  and  defended, 
and  cared  for  and  prayed  over  all  her  life  ?  If  she  were 
here,  you  know  very  well  she'd  want  you  to  do  the  right 
thing,  the  decent  thing.  Oh,  Bob,  be  a  man  for  once  ! 
Don't  have  us  all  bolstering  you  up,  and  helping  you 
along.  Stand  on  your  own  feet ;  think  of  somebody 
besides  yourself.  You  know  what's  right ;  then  do  it 
because  it's  right,  not  because  Lorrie  or  some  of  the 
rest  of  us  tell  you  to  !" 

"I  know  --  I  know  !  I'm  going  to  !  I  know  I  don't 
amount  to  much,  but  I'll  try  to  do  the  right  thing  this 
time  —  I'm  trying  to,  Van  Cleve,"  said  Bob,  pitifully. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  281 

"I  was  just  thinking  about  Lorrie.  I  want  to  help 
her,  I  don't  want  to  put  any  more  on  her  —  honestly  I 
do,  Van  —  I  want  to  be  good  to  Lorrie.  She's  the  best- 
sister  that  ever  was,  and  it's  just  as  you  say,  she's 
stood  a  lot  for  me.  I  ought  to  spare  Lorrie.  You 
don't  need  to  talk  any  more,  Van,  I'm  going  to  do  it." 

He  spoke  pleadingly,  but  Van  Cleve's  flare  of  anger 
was  over,  and  he  was  already  ashamed  of  it ;  when  he 
looked  at  the  other's  stricken  face,  his  heart  smote 
him.  "Well,  then,  you  come  along  home  with  me, 
and  make  it  all  straight,  if  you're  so  anxious  to  be 
good  to  Lorrie,"  he  said  gruffly.  "Here,  Bob,  you 
look  kind  of  fagged,  you'd  better  stretch  out  over  here 
in  the  shade  of  the  deck  house,  on  my  blanket.  I'll 
make  a  pillow  out  of  the  coat." 

Bob  submitted ;  he  gave  Van  Cleve  a  glance  of 
affectionate  understanding,  not  without  a  spark  of  his 
old  sweet-tempered  mischief.  "Oh,  you  old  grouch, 
you!"  he  said,  thumping  the  other  a  weak  blow  on 
the  back,  and  collapsed  in  one  of  his  spasms  of  cough 
ing.  The  letters  which  he  was  still  holding  flew  out 
of  his  hand,  scattering  about  the  decks,  and  Van  Cleve 
gathered  them  up  and  brought  them  to  him.  He  was 
surprised  at  the  haste  and  eagerness  with  which  Robert, 
even  in  the  middle  of  his  coughing,  snatched  at  them  and 
crammed  them  away  in  his  pockets.  "Did  you  see 
any  of  those?"  he  asked  with  unwonted  sharpness, 
when  he  had  recovered  breath. 

"What?  To  read,  you  mean?  Why,  no.  I  didn't 
look.  I  don't  want  to  know  what's  in  other  people's 
letters  any  more  than  you  do,  you  know,"  Van  Cleve 
said  with  an  effort  at  lightness. 

This  was  all  or  nearly  all  that  passed  between  the 
two  on  the  subject  of  Bob's  marriage;  that  painful 
chapter  was  closed,  and  by  tacit  agreement  neither  one 
of  them  referred  to  it  again,  except  once,  when  they 


282  VAN   CLEVE: 

were  nearing  Tampa  on  their  return,  and  this  last  chap 
ter,  too,  of  trials  and  adventures  was  all  but  ended.  Van 
Cleve's  conscience,  which  had  never  been  at  ease  on 
one  point,  prompted  him  to  say,  with  some  diffidence : 
"See  here,  Bob,  there's  one  thing  I  ought  to  say.  I 
don't  want  to  be  unjust  to  you.  But  I  don't  want  to  be 
unjust  to  —  to  this  girl  either.  That  poor  woman,  her 
mother  —  that  poor  Mrs.  Jameson  is  —  is  all  right,  I 
I  know  that.  But  I  —  well,  I  don't  know  anything  about 
the  daughter.  I've  seen  her  running  around  the 
streets  late  at  night  with  another  man,  in  a  carriage, 
you  know  —  his  arm  around  her  —  and  all  that.  I 
say  I  don't  want  to  be  unjust  to  her,  and  the  fix  she's 
in  now,  you  can't  blame  her  for  wanting  to  get  out  of 
by  any  kind  of  hook  or  crook.  But  if  you've  got  any 
reason  to  think  you're  being  made  a  convenience 
of  —  ?" 

"I  said  I  was  going  to  marry  her.  So  you'd  better 
not  talk  any  more,  Van  Cleve,"  said  Bob.  And  Van 
Cleve,  glancing  into  his  face,  was  silenced. 


PART   III 
CHAPTER  I 

IN   WHICH   WE   RETURN   TO   OUR   MUTTON 

THE  next  time  I  saw  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  was  in  the 
fall  of  that  year,  some  months  after  his  Cuban  vaca 
tion  trip,  of  which  we  had  all  heard  during  the  summer 
with  a  mild  wonder  and  curiosity.  It  seemed  a  bizarre 
sort  of  recreation  for  him  to  take.  Van  was  notori 
ously  absorbed  in  work ;  his  bank,  his  Building  Asso 
ciation,  his  string  of  plain,  respectable  clients  with  their 
small  affairs  and  savings  had  hitherto  furnished  him  with 
all  the  entertainment  he  appeared  to  want,  and  he  had 
not  been  known  to  display  the  slightest  interest  in  the 
Cubans,  nor,  for  that  matter,  in  our  own  picturesque 
and  brave  endeavors  on  their  behalf.  If  anything,  he 
had  rather  disapproved  of  the  latter.  That  he  should 
have  deliberately  chosen  to  spend  his  first  leisure  time 
in  years  amongst  the  discomforts  and  (for  all  we  knew) 
the  genuine  horrors  of  the  war,  was  a  queer  develop 
ment.  But  the  lure  of  adventure  is  strange  and  lays 
hold  of  the  most  unpromising  subjects  in  the  most  unex 
pected  ways.  After  all,  Van  Cleve  was  a  young  man, 
though  nobody  ever  thought  of  him  as  young ;  he  was 
in  reality  no  older  than  that  poor  young  Cortwright 
that  Lorrie  Gilbert  had  been  engaged  to  or  than  her 
brother  Bob,  and  it  had  not  seemed  anything  out-of- 
the-way  for  them  to  go.  Poor  fellows,  neither  one  had 
got  much  of  a  vacation  out  of  it ! 

283 


284  VAN   CLEVE: 

As  for  Van  Cleve,  it  had  undeniably  done  him  good. 
At  the  end  of  four  or  five  weeks,  he  was  back  on  our 
streets  again,  burned  dark  as  an  Indian  —  whom,  in 
deed,  with  his  high  cheek  bones  and  flat  chin,  he  not  a 
little  resembled — lean,  wiry,  and  hard-muscled,  evi 
dently  in  the  best  of  health.  The  National  Loan  and 
Savings  welcomed  him  with  an  enthusiasm  that  aston 
ished  the  young  fellow,  and  no  doubt  secretly  pleased 
him  a  good  deal,  although  he  was  far  too  proud  to  show 
it.  They  all  said  they  had  missed  him ;  Schlactmann  - 
who  had  fairly  made  up  his  mind  to  resign  at  last,  and 
would  leave  for  Flagstaff,  Arizona,  the  first  of  the  year 
-  shook  his  hand  and  said  with  some  significance  that 
he  would  take  his  rest  easier  now  he  felt  confident  the 
work  would  be  done  right  in  the  office ;  old  Mr.  Burg- 
staller  came  and  complimented  Van's  appearance,  and 
asked  naive  questions  about  Cuba.  The  old  German 
women  beamed  on  him  from  outside  the  brass  cage- 
work,  and  one  of  them  actually  brought  in  a  bag  of  rich 
little  cookies  —  "  Blitz-kuchen,  Hilda,  she  make  'em  for 
Mr.  Kendrick,"  she  said,  nodding  and  smiling;  and 
Van  Cleve,  who  in  the  last  ten  years  had  seen  Hilda 
grow  from  a  flaxen-pigtailed  youngster,  coming  around 
every  Saturday  night  with  the  family  savings  folded 
in  a  scrap  of  newspaper  —  the  Volksblatt  —  and  pinned 
inside  her  blue  woollen  dress,  to  a  buxom,  dashing 
young  woman,  chewing  gum  and  wearing  the  latest 
fashion  in  Eton  jackets,  pumps,  and  sailor  hats,  Van 
Cleve  grinned  answeringly  and  took  the  offering  with  a 
sudden  warming  of  his  own  heart.  Perhaps  he  was  not 
quite  so  hard  as  he  looked,  or  as  he  fancied  himself. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  was  not  at  all  impressed 
by  the  attentions  of  Mr.  Gebhardt,  although  that  kind 
and  sentimental  patron  made  almost  as  much  of  him  on 
the  occasion  of  this  return  as  if  Van  Cleve  had  been  his 
own  son.  The  younger  man  inwardly  and  against  his 
own  will  distrusted  that  very  kindness  and  that  very 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  285 

sentiment ;  he  really  liked  his  superior,  but  he  would  have 
liked  him  better  without  so  much  petting  from  him. 
The  president  of  the  bank  invited  his  assistant  book 
keeper  out  to  dinner  at  his  great,  cool,  rich,  beautifully 
ordered  house  on  Adams  Road,  overlooking  the  golf 
links,  with  the  gables  and  chimneys  of  other  similarly 
rich  and  great  homes  showing  charmingly  in  the  spa 
cious  landscape  of  lawns  and  trees  roundabout ;  Mr. 
Gebhardt's  family  of  ladies  were  gone  east  for  the  sum 
mer  to  their  cottage  at  Watch  Hill  (to  Van's  relief), 
but  the  gentlemen  dined  handsomely  and  formally  and 
had  their  coffee  on  the  terrace  as  usual ;  and  the  banker 
talked  with  a  flattering  confidence  to  his  young  friend 
about  affairs  at  the  National,  and  about  Van's  own 
affairs,  and  was  so  genial,  companionable,  and  unreserved, 
so  unaffectedly  pleased  with  and  friendly  to  Van  Cleve, 
that  the  latter's  conscience  rebuked  him. 

"It's  all  right,  he  means  it  —  at  least,  he  means  it 
now  —  every  word  of  it.  I  needn't  think  that  I'm  so 
important,  anyhow,  that  he  feels  he's  got  to  get  on  the 
good  side  of  me!"  thought  Van,  shrewdly ;  "it's  just 
Mr.  Gebhardt's  way.  He  makes  the  same  fuss  over 
Schlactmann,  over  nearly  everybody.  I've  seen  him  do 
it  so  often,  I  suppose  it's  cheapened  it.  But  he  can't 
help  being  expansive  and  emotional ;  he  acts  as  if  you 
were  the  best  friend  he's  got  in  the  world,  because  that's 
the  way  he  really  feels  for  the  moment.  Probably  he's 
as  sincere  as  most  of  us.  People  fool  themselves  some 
times.  Only  I  wish  he  hadn't  started  in  to  be  so  thick 
and  confidential  with  me ;  people  always  dislike  you 
when  they  realize  they've  been  too  confidential  with 
you  -  '  from  which  it  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Kendrick 
had  no  idea  of  presuming  on  his  employer's  indiscretions. 
No,  Van  Cleve  appeared  in  the  offices  of  the  bank  ex 
actly  as  before,  a  steady  and  efficient  young  man  with  a 
tolerably  sane  and  just  estimate  of  his  own  value.  That 
may  have  been  one  of  the  reasons  that  Mr.  Gebhardt 


286  VAN   CLEVE: 

never  appeared  to  regret  —  as  the  other  had  feared  — 
his  frankness  with  his  subordinate ;  he  was  constantly 
and  profusely  kind  after  the  same  manner.  He  was 
forever  inviting  Van  to  dinner  nowadays ;  he  had  him 
playing  billiards  at  his  own  expensive  club ;  he  even 
urged  the  young  man  to  give  up  his  boarding-house  and 
come  out  to  Adams  Road  for  the  rest  of  the  heated 
term  —  there  was  the  whole  big,  comfortable  place  — 
the  garden  full  of  fruit  and  vegetables  going  to  waste  — 
such  quantities  of  milk  and  cream  and  fresh  eggs  that 
Mr.  Gebhardt  had  caught  one  of  the  men  selling  these 
goods  in  a  poorer  suburban  settlement  near  by  —  there 
were  the  servants  and  horses  with  practically  nothing 
to  do,  and  so  on,  and  so  on.  Van  declined,  however 
-"It's  a  good  way  out  on  the  Hill,  you  know,  and 
supposing  I  got  stalled  on  the  cars  some  morning  coming 
down  town  -  "he  suggested  clumsily ;  and  Gebhardt, 
with  some  good-natured  remonstrances,  abandoned  his 
persuasions.  The  banker  had  not  reached  his  present 
age  and  position  in  the  world  without  some  study  of  his 
fellow-man ;  and  whether  he  was  surprised,  or  offended, 
or  merely  amused  at  Van  Cleve's  stiff-necked  refusal  to 
be  made  a  favorite  of,  he  did  not  allow  it  to  show. 

As  I  was  saying,  it  was  some  time  late  in  the  fall 
when  I  myself  first  met  Mr.  Kendrick ;  and  then  one 
Sunday  afternoon,  I  encountered  him,  of  all  places  in  the 
world,  at  the  Art  Museum  in  Paradise  Park,  a  place  to 
which,  as  is  usual  with  all  public  monuments,  wherever 
they  may  be,  no  native  ever  goes  unless  with  some  visit 
ing  stranger.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  imag 
ine  Van  Cleve  diverting  himself  there,  at  any  rate; 
and,  in  point  of  fact,  he  was  not.  He  looked  mortally 
bored,  standing  about  with  folded  arms,  and  a  cata 
logue  of  the  Society  of  Western  Artists  —  whose  pic 
tures  were  on  exhibition  at  the  time  —  crumpled  in 
one  hand.  There  was  a  crowd  ;  but  Van,  being  a  tall 
man  and  occupied  in  gazing  around  anywhere  but  at 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  287 

the  pictures,  caught  sight  of  me  very  soon,  and  nodded 
with  his  habitual  short  civility  which  so  often  antago 
nized  people.  Nevertheless,  I  went  up  and  spoke  to 
him,  taking  care  not  to  refer  to  Cuba,  by  the  way ;  he 
must  have  wearied  of  that  topic  by  now.  I  asked  him 
if  Miss  Lucas  had  a  painting  there,  not  being  able  to 
account  for  his  presence  otherwise. 

He  said  she  had;  he  had  just  found  it;  she  had 
wanted  him  to  go  and  see  it.  It  was  the  landscape  or 
sea-view  over  there,  No.  270  —  let's  see,  what  did  she 
call  it  ?  He  unrumpled  his  catalogue,  and,  consulting 
it,  announced  that  the  title  was  "The  Beach:  Pass 
Christian,  Mississippi."  "  They  're  down  there,  you 
know,"  he  told  me  casually. 

Number  270  was  hung  on  the  line,  if  you  please; 
and  we  went  and  looked  at  it  with  great  respect.  "I 
suppose  it  must  be  pretty  good,  or  she  couldn't  have 
got  it  in.  I  don't  know  much  about  pictures  myself," 
said  Van  Cleve,  impartially. 

"Did  you  say  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  and  the  family  are 
living  there  ?  I  thought  - 

"Yes.     They  were  in  New  York  for  a  while,  but  they 
wanted  to  try  the  South  this  winter.     Do  you  happen 
to  have  seen  Miss  Gilbert  ?     She  was  coming  to-day  - 
again  his  eyes  roved. 

It  took  some  self-command  not  to  smile  at  that.  Of 
course  Van  Cleve  had  come  to  see  his  cousin's  painting 
hanging  (on  the  line  !)  in  this  honorable  company  —  oh, 
of  course  !  And,  without  a  doubt,  it  was  pure  coinci 
dence  that  Miss  Gilbert  should  chance  to  be  visiting 
the  Museum  that  very  day  —  oh,  without  a  doubt ! 
The  fact  is,  everybody  knew  about  Van  Cleve  Kendrick 
and  Lorrie  Gilbert.  Everybody  had  been  saying  for 
months  past  —  ever  since  that  tragic  event  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Cuban  campaign,  indeed  —  that  it 
seemed  rather  dreadful  to  look  at  it  that  way,  but  Lorrie 
had  in  all  probability  made  a  very  lucky  escape  from 


288  VAN   CLEVE: 

that  marriage.  There  had  always  been  more  or  less 
talk  about  Cortwright,  not  all  of  it  true,  of  course,  but 
still  — .  He  was  just  the  sort  of  handsome,  dashing, 
dissipated  young  fellow  that  seems  to  have  a  disastrous 
attraction  for  nice  girls  —  the  nicer  they  are,  the  more 
likely  to  throw  themselves  away  on  Cortwrights. 
There  might  have  been  something  in  him  —  one  couldn't 
tell  —  he  had  died  in  a  fine  way.  But  had  he  lived,  it 
was  a  question  how  the  match  would  have  turned  out. 
At  all  events,  as  long  as  the  poor  fellow  was  gone,  why, 
it  might  be  a  heartless  thing  to  say,  but  we  hoped  Lorrie 
would  get  over  it  and  give  Van  Kendrick  a  chance. 

She  came  into  the  picture-gallery  —  it  was  the  room 
where  the  big  canvas  of  "  John  Huss  and  his  Followers  " 
hangs  —  at  that  moment,  with  her  father  and  another 
gentleman  about  his  age ;  a  striking,  conspicuous  per 
son,  very  high  and  wide,  and  by  his  gait  or  looks  some 
how  reminding  one  a  little  of  Daniel  Webster  and  a  little 
of  Buffalo  Bill ;  and  he  had  a  slouch  hat,  and  buckskin 
gauntlet-gloves,  and  a  large,  red,  purple,  handsome, 
coarse  old  face.  He  was  so  incongruous  a  figure  to  be 
associated  with  the  stooping  old  professor  with  his  neat, 
gray  side-whiskers  and  his  antique  silk  hat,  peering  near 
sightedly  at  the  pictures  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  leaning 
pretty  heavily  on  the  cane  which  the  doorkeeper,  out 
of  a  good-hearted  consideration  for  his  years,  had  al 
lowed  him  to  retain  —  I  say  the  swaggering  elderly 
d'Artagnan  was  so  much  of  a  fish  out  of  water  that  at 
the  first  glance  I  supposed  he  had  simply  happened  to 
enter  at  the  same  time,  with  the  rest  of  the  crowd. 
But  now  he  was  speaking  to  Lorrie ;  and  when  we 
reached  them,  Professor  Gilbert  had  got  him  camped 
before  "John  Huss,"  and  was  delivering  a  little  lecture 
on  the  life  and  teachings  of  that  eminent  theologian  — 
"  Archbishop  Sbinko  in  1410  denounced  Huss  to  the 
Pope  —  Alexander  V,  if  I  remember  correctly  —  as  a 
Wickliffite  — "we  heard. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  289 

"Ah  —  hum  —  a  which,  did  you  say,  Professor?" 
asked  the  other. 

"A  Wickliffite  —  a  follower  of  John  de  Wickliffe, 
sir.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  Huss  was 
greatly  influenced  by  his  writings.  The  similarity  of 
his  conclusions  to  the  argument  set  forth  by  Wickliffe 
in  the  Trialogues  proves  it  to  my  mind,"  said  the  Pro 
fessor,  earnestly ;  I  daresay  he  thought  in  all  simplicity 
that  the  subject  was  deeply  interesting  to  his  guest  and 
that  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  Wickliffe  was  part 
of  every  ordinarily  liberal  education.  "  However,  it 
was  not  until  some  four  or  five  years  later  that  Sigis- 
mund  of  Bohemia-  '  he  went  on  talking,  while  the 
other  listened  vaguely  with  one  eye  upon  a  mammoth 
painting  at  the  end  of  the  room  exhibiting  a  baker's 
dozen  of  nude  nymphs  circling  about  a  nude  young 
faun  with  a  flute,  in  the  midst  of  an  Arcadian  landscape 
-some  Western  artist's  idea  of  "Spring,"  according 
to  the  catalogue.  I  had  time  to  whisper  to  Van  Cleve 
and  ask  him  who  was  the  man  with  the  Gilberts,  did 
he  know  ? 

"Oh,  yes;  he's  a  Judge  Cortwright  from  Maysville. 
Phil  Cortwright's  father,  you  know.  He's  been  up  here 
staying  with  them  for  two  or  three  days.  Lorrie  said 
they  were  going  to  bring  him  here  to-day.  They've 
been  taking  him  around,  of  course." 

That  explained  him.  And  it  wTas  a  little  disquieting 
to  reflect  that  Philip  himself  might  have  grown  to  be 
just  such  another  as  this  terrible  old  lewd-eyed  satyr  of  a 
parent.  When  we  were  introduced,  I  was  aware  of  a 
kind  of  halo  of  bourbon  about  him ;  he  carried  his  own 
especial  atmosphere,  like  the  Olympians.  To  be  sure, 
the  poor  Gilberts  were  no  strangers  to  that,  after  their 
years  of  sad  experience  with  that  good-for-nothing 
son  ;  but  what  did  they  think  of  the  Judge  ?  What  did 
Lorrie  think  of  her  Philip's  father  ?  The  girl  spoke  to 
us  with  her  usual  brightness ;  Lorrie  always  had  a 


290  VAN   CLEVE: 

spirited  way,  and  she  was  looking  as  pretty  as  ever,  if  a 
little  thin.  The  Judge  eyed  her  almost  too  apprecia 
tively,  I  thought ;  but  indeed  he  eyed  all  the  women 
too  appreciatively.  The  whole  thing  was  rather  funny 
and  rather  pitiable ;  that  nice,  scholarly  old  gentleman 
expounding  about  John  Huss,  and  the  other  leering 
around  at  all  the  young  girls,  and  at  the  canvases  and 
classic  marbles  in  which  he  saw  only  the  nakedness  and 
nothing  of  the  beauty.  "  That's  a  very  fine  painting, 
the  large  one,  with  the  —  er  —  shepherdesses  and  so  on 
in  the  pasture,  eh?"  he  interrupted  Professor  Gilbert, 
as  the  latter  was  innocently  perorating ;  and  he  directed 
Van  Cleve's  attention  to  the  " Spring/'  with  a  sidelong 
grin  and  a  swift  flicker  of  one  eyelid,  which  I  suppose  he 
thought  none  of  the  rest  of  us  saw.  Van  gave  the 
picture  a  matter-of-fact  survey  and  grunted. 

"I  don't  know  much  about  pictures,"  he  repeated; 
" Evelyn's  got  one  here,  Lorrie.  I  told  you,  didn't  I  ?" 
And  once  more  we  all  walked  over  and  solemnly  viewed 
Miss  Lucas's  exhibit,  Judge  Cortwright  struggling  with 
a  yawn,  and  the  professor  looking  dimly  ill  at  ease. 

"Is  Judge  Cortwright  here  for  any  length  of  time?" 
I  asked  him. 

"Well,  for  as  long  as  we  can  keep  him,  of  course," 
said  Professor  Gilbert,  whose  Virginia  standards  of 
hospitality  would  never  have  allowed  him  to  utter  the 
most  remote  hint  of  any  guest's  departure.  "He  came 
up  from  Maysville  only  last  Wednesday.  To  be  frank, 
madame,  I  feared  he  would  find  it  rather  dull  at  our 
house,  he  is  used  to  what  Mr.  Roosevelt  has  called  in 
his  book  the  'strenuous  life'  —  much  more  strenuous 
than  ours  at  any  rate.  My  own  activities  are  confined 
to  daily  hammering  a  little  of  the  humanities  into  a 
number  of  young  people,  half  of  whom  forget  what  I 
have  told  them  the  next  day  and  the  other  half  get  it 
all  wrong!"  said  Mr.  Gilbert,  not  without  a  touch  of 
mild  humor.  "As  I  say,  I  was  afraid  Judge  Cortwright 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  291 

wouldn't  find  it  very  interesting,  but  Van  Cleve,  who  is 
quite  a  man  of  the  world,  has  been  kindly  helping  us  out. 
He  has  taken  the  Judge  to  his  club  and  to  places  in  the 
evening,  you  understand." 

I  did  understand.  And  it  struck  me  that  both  the 
Professor  and  his  daughter  were  very  thankful  to  resign 
their  visitor  to  Van  Cleve's  care  and  leadership  ;  Lorrie 
dropped  behind  with  me,  too,  as  we  strolled  through 
the  rooms.  I  asked,  with  as  casual  an  air  as  I  could 
command,  how  Bob  was. 

"  Why,  he's  doing  very  well  now,  thanks  —  very  much 
improved.  It  must  be  wonderful,  that  climate.  The 
doctors  said  he  couldn't  get  well  here,  you  know.  But 
Bob  says  they  tell  him  now  that  he'll  probably  be  able 
to  come  home  in  the  spring." 

"Is  it  Colorado  Springs  where  he's  staying?" 

"No,  Boulder." 

I  made  some  banal  remark  about  it's  being  very 
hard  on  a  man  to  have  to  give  up  work  on  account  of 
his  health,  etc.  A  piece  of  hypocrisy,  but  what  would 
you  have?  I  must  say  something,  for  silence  itself 
would  have  been  an  awkward  comment.  The  Gilberts 
knew  that  we  knew  why  Bob's  health  had  failed ;  that 
he  had  been  drinking  it  away  for  years,  and  that  as  for 
work,  he  had  scarcely  done  a  hand's  turn  in  his  whole  life. 
They  knew ;  yet  still  we  kept  up  our  poor,  well-meant 
pretences,  as  is  our  habit  in  this  world ;  and  upon  my 
word,  we  do  many  righteous  things  that  are  less  ad 
mirable  ! 

"Yes,  it  must  be  hard,"  Lorrie  said,  playing  her  part 
of  the  game  pluckily ;  "but  even  if  Bob  can't  ever  come 
back  to  this  climate,  he  can  always  get  something  to  do 
out  there,  you  know.  He  says  he's  going  to  look  around 
as  soon  as  he's  well  enough."  She  paused,  and  then 
said,  rather  diffidently,  and  not  looking  at  me,  "You 
knew  about  his  being  married  ?" 

"About  the  wedding?     Oh,  yes.     It  made  quite  c.i 


292  VAN   CLEVE: 

excitement,  you  know.     We  were  all  very  much  in 
terested." 

"Were  you  surprised?" 

"  Well,  not  so  very  much.  It  had  been  going  on  for  a 
good  while,  hadn't  it  ?  I  never  heard  of  your  brother 
being  attentive  to  anybody  else."  I  should  not  have 
liked  to  tell  her  all  the  comments  that  had  come  to 
my  own  ears.  The  least  unkind  one  had  been  from 
somebody  who  said  that  the  affair  was  like  what  you 
sometimes  read  in  obituary  notices,  "  .  .  .  Lingering, 
but  very  sudden  at  the  last!"  Some  one  else  remarked 
that  it  was  astonishing  that  any  one  could  have  "  nailed 
Bob  Gilbert  down  'for  keeps'  to  anything."  And  there 
had  been  considerable  wonder  expressed  that  Miss  Jame 
son  should  have  taken  so  much  trouble  and  displayed 
so  much  perseverance  to  capture  him,  when  half  the 
effort  would  probably  have  landed  her  ten  times  as  good 
a  match.  Of  course  the  Gilberts  were  one  of  the 
F.  F.  V.'s,  but  Paula  was  as  common  as  she  could  be, 
and  what  good  would  a  First  Family  of  Virginia  do  her  ? 

I  said  to  Lorrie,  meaning  to  show  an  amiable  inter 
est  :  "It's  getting  to  be  very  swagger  to  be  married  at 
your  summer  home,  or  at  Bar  Harbor  or  The  Hot,  isn't 
it  ?  I  noticed  that  the  Jamesons  were  in  the  country. 
Was  it  a  pretty  wedding  ?" 

"It  was  very  quiet,"  said  Lorrie,  looking  down  and 
stroking  and  patting  her  muff  nervously;    "they  — 
they  wanted  it  to  be  quiet.     There  weren't  any  cards 
or  invitations  or  anything.     They  just  had  the  notice 
put  in  the  paper.     They  wanted  it  to  be  quiet." 

"Well,  that  was  very  sensible,  considering  that  Bob 
wasn't  really  well,"  said  I,  hastily  and  awkwardly. 
I  felt  as  if  the  subject  were  not  a  safe  one,  even  though 
Lorrie  herself  had  opened  it.  Her  manner  was  strained 
and  unnatural ;  and  Professor  Gilbert  stood  by,  si 
lently  fumbling  and  pulling  at  his  old  worn  gloves,  in 
visible  discomfort.  The  family  must  have  disliked 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  293 

Robert's  choice  of  a  wife  even  more  than  Society-at- 
large  had  suspected;  it  was  plainly  as  much  as  they 
could  do  to  put  a  good  face  on  the  matter.  And  it 
must  be  allowed  that  Society-at-large  sympathized  with 
them.  "Did  they  —  I  suppose  they  went  at  once  to 
Colorado?"  I  blundered  along.  "It's  very  nice  for 
you  to  know  that  he  has  a  wife  with  him.  And  it 
keeps  him  from  being  lonesome,  too." 

"Yes.  No.  That  is  —  Robert's  wife  is  not  with 
him  -  "  the  father  began  hesitatingly. 

"Not  with  him  just  now,  of  course,  Papa  means," 
Lorrie  broke  in ;  and  she  went  on  to  talk  in  a  hurried, 
sprightly  way,  still  quite  unlike  her  own,  until  Van 
Cleve  and  the  judge,  having  made  the  round  of  the 
rooms,  came  up  to  us.  I  never  found  out  where  Bob's 
wife  was ;  upon  comparing  notes  with  other  mutual 
acquaintances,  it  developed  that  nobody  knew  where 
she  was,  except  that  she  was  not  with  Bob,  and  not  here 
in  town,  neither  she  nor  her  mother.  That  must  have 
been  a  relief  to  the  Gilberts,  at  any  rate. 


CHAPTER   II 
IN   WHICH   MR.   KENDRICK   PUTS   His   FOOT    DOWN 

CERTAIN  kind-hearted  persons  professed  to  think  it 
highly  reprehensible  for  the  Van  Cleves  to  have  packed 
off  to  New  York  or  wherever  else  they  chose,  leaving 
behind  the  worthiest  member  of  the  family,  homeless, 
and  exposed  to  the  temptations  which,  as  everybody 
knows,  beset  the  paths  of  lonesome  young  men  in  board 
ing-houses.  However,  Van  never  showed  any  signs  of 
deterioration  under  this  neglect ;  he  was  an  exemplary 
boarder,  quiet  and  punctual.  In  his  bachelor  apart 
ment  there  was  the  oak  " bedroom-set"  that  had  always 
been  his  when  he  lived  at  home,  beginning  to  look  shabby 
now,  though  still  substantial ;  there  was  J.  Van  Cleve's 
strong-box  stored  away  on  the  top  shelf  of  the  cupboard  ; 
there  was  a  sectional  bookcase  that  Van  had  bought  him 
self  with  some  of  the  first  spare  money  he  had  ever 
made ;  it  took  thirty  dollars,  and  sometimes  when  his 
eyes  fell  on  it,  Van  Cleve  recalled  with  amusement  the 
struggle  he  had  had  between  it  and  a  bicycle,  which  was 
the  secret  desire  of  his  cramped  boyish  heart.  He  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  the  bookcase,  he  remembered,  be 
cause  it  would  never  need  repairs,  devastating  expendi 
tures  for  tools,  tire-tape,  and  so  forth ;  he  was  afraid 
that  he  could  not  afford  the  upkeep  of  a  bicycle  !  On 
the  mantelpiece  there  stood  a  yellowing  old  photo 
graph  of  his  grandmother  taken  years  ago  when  her  hair 
was  still  black,  very  alert  and  handsome  in  an  elegant 
sacque  and  open  ruffled  sleeves  and  chignon,  and  holding 
on  her  lap  a  fat  lump  of  a  baby  in  a  blur  of  white 

294 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  295 

embroideries,  with  no  visible  expression  on  its  dough- 
featured  face,  though  Mrs.  Van  Cleve  always  declared 
that  it  was  the  brightest  and  most  beautiful  child  ever 
seen,  to  wit :  Van  Cleve  himself  at  the  age  of  nine  months. 
Young  Kendrick,  who  was  fond  of  his  grandmother, 
had  a  sort  of  laughing  affection  for  this  thing ;  he  was 
at  heart  rather  proud  of  his  good-looking,  spirited,  well- 
bred  women,  even  when  he  felt  that  they  needed  a 
harder  hand  held  over  them.  Latterly,  he  had  begun 
to  perceive  the  moral  of  a  story  his  grandmother  had 
once  told  him  about  Joshua's  refusal  to  buy  her  a 
carpet  —  a  body-brussels  carpet  for  the  best  bedroom 
on  which  she  had  set  her  heart.  "Your  grandfather 
said  up  and  down  he  would  not  let  me  get  it ;  he  said 
he  wasn't  going  to  spend  money  for  a  new  carpet  when 
the  old  one  was  plenty  good  enough.  And  you  know 
it  really  was,  only  I  was  tired  of  it,  and  this  other  was 
so  pretty.  But  what  do  you  think  I  did,  Van  ?  I  just 
made  up  my  mind  I'd  have  that  carpet  in  spite  of 
him ;  and  I  went  to  work  and  saved  up  the  money  bit 
by  bit  out  of  my  allowance  that  he  gave  me  to  dress 
myself  with.  It  cost  fifty-eight  dollars,  too ;  but  it  was 
splendid  quality  and  lasted  for  years.  I  always  liked 
that  carpet  better  than  any  other  in  the  house,"  Mrs. 
Joshua  concluded  pensively,  all  unconscious,  for  her 
part,  of  the  moral. 

Of  course  we  were  all  used  to  the  Van  Cleves,  but 
when  people  who  knew  them  as  well  as  this  writer  heard 
about  that  Pass  Christian  move,  it  was  quite  impos 
sible  to  keep  from  laughing.  Where  to  next  ?  The 
family  had  tried  the  South  before  without  conspicuous 
success,  but  the  New  Orleans  and  Palatka  orange-grove 
episodes  appeared  now  to  be  entirely  forgotten  !  All  at 
once  New  York  City  and  its  vicinity  became  utterly 
unbearable.  The  cost  of  living  was  exorbitant.  They 
could  not  afford  a  servant  in  New  York,  and  in  the  coun 
try  no  servant  would  stay.  The  water  and  air  in  the  city 


296  VAN   CLEVE: 

were  contaminated  by  every  germ  known  to  medical 
science ;  the  outlying  towns  —  half  a  dozen  of  which 
they  had  tried  —  were  abhorrent  with  a  population  of 
commuters  and  suburbanites  comparable  for  noisome- 
ness  to  the  germs.  It  was  imperatively  necessary  for 
them  to  go  to  some  small,  quiet  place  in  a  mild  climate 
where  life  would  be  simple,  and  where  at  the  same  time 
they  could  have  congenial  society,  good  society,  not  un 
speakable  vulgarians  of  commuters,  forever  rushing 
for  the  trains  with  their  parcels  and  their  babies,  with 
their  dreadful  neighborhood  clubs  and  gossip ;  and  not 
the  questionable  occupants  of  New  York  apartment 
houses,  either,  where  you  never  knew  who  might  be 
living  across  the  hall,  and  you  wouldn't  like  to  be  seen 
going  up  and  down  in  the  elevator  with  some  of  them. 
Ashville,  Pensacola,  San  Antonio,  were  discussed  and 
dismissed  in  turn,  in  favor  of  Pass  Christian  on  the  Gulf. 
Living,  of  course,  was  cheap  there ;  you  didn't  have  to 
heat  the  houses,  and  your  garden  was  constantly  full  of 
fruits  and  vegetables ;  they  had,  as  usual,  obtained  volu 
minous  statistics  from  hosts  of  perfectly  reliable  per 
sons.  As  to  society,  the  large  hotels  were  likewise  full 
all  winter  of  charming  people  who  went  down  there  for 
rest  and  recreation,  and  to  whom  Evelyn  could  give 
painting-lessons.  Mrs.  Lucas  and  her  daughter  covered 
reams  of  paper  writing  out  these  incontrovertible  argu 
ments  ;  Van  Cleve  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  read  the 
fourth  of  it.  He  was  very  busy  and  had  no  time  to 
thresh  the  subject  out  with  them,  even  if  they  would 
have  listened  to  him.  What  it  all  boiled  down  to  - 
as  he  told  himself  with  a  passing  irritation  —  was  that 
they  had  got  one  of  their  periodic  attacks  of  restless 
ness  again. 

"  Dear  Aunt  Myra,"  he  wrote,  "your  letter  of  the  15th 
rec'd.  I  can't  make  the  trip  to  Montclair,  New  Jersey, 
merely  to  talk  over  your  plan  as  you  suggest,  because 
having  been  away  for  a  month  last  summer,  I  don't  feel 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  297 

like  asking  for  another  leave  so  soon ;  and  the  changes 
at  the  bank  have  piled  the  work  up  considerably.  Be 
sides,  it  would  hardly  be  worth  the  time  and  expense, 
as  I  already  understand  what  you  want  to  do,  and  talk 
ing  wouldn't  make  it  any  clearer.  I  suppose  you  might 
as  well  go  to  Pass  Christian,  as  you  don't  seem  able  to 
find  anything  satisfactory  where  you  are.  Enclosed 
find  New  York  draft  for  the  $250. 

"Tell  Evie  that  I  am  glad  to  hear  people  admire  her 
pictures  so  much,  and  hope  she  will  sell  some  of  them  to 
good  advantage.  Love  to  all,  as  ever, 

"V.  C.  KENDRICK." 

So  the  change  was  made ;  and  you  may  be  sure  the 
Van  Cleve  ladies  kept  within  their  appointed  sum  of 
money;  they  all  had  a  clever,  bargaining  streak,  and 
in  their  own  way  were  good  managers,  never  wasting, 
and  never  owing  any  tradesman  a  penny.  What  with 
taste  and  ingenuity  and  their  peculiar  distinction  of 
appearance,  which  they  contrived  to  impart  to  all  their 
surroundings,  they  made  a  better  showing  than  many 
who  had  ten  times  the  income.  Mr.  Gebhardt,  who  took 
his  family  down  to  the  Mardi-Gras  and  to  some  of  the 
Gulf  resorts  that  winter,  and  some  others  of  our  people 
who  were  there  and  saw  the  Van  Cleves,  came  back  with 
enthusiastic  accounts  of  their  charming  little  bungalow, 
furnished  so  artistically  with  things  they  had  picked  up 
and  with  Evelyn's  pictures.  They  themselves  wrote 
glowingly  to  Van  Cleve  about  the  balmy  weather  in 
January,  the  unfailing  sea-breeze,  the  drives,  the  boat 
ing  and  bathing,  the  delightful  society.  Of  course,  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  money  and  display  at  the  big  hotels, 
and  the  little  ones  were  generally  crowded  with 
excursionists,  land-boomers'  conventions,  hunting  and 
fishing  men,  and  United  Order  of  Owls  on  an  outing. 
But  the  cottagers  were  lovely,  and  even  the  hotels  served 
a  purpose.  Evelyn  held  an  exhibition  at  the  Sea- View 


298  VAN   CLEVE: 

House,  which  was  jammed,  and  everybody  went  per 
fectly  wild  over  the  pictures.  It  cost  a  good  deal,  as 
they  charged  a  mountainous  rent  for  the  room  (the  hotel 
keepers  were  all  robbers),  and  then  there  was  the  cost  of 
printing  the  catalogues,  which  had  a  cover  that  the  artist 
designed  and  lettered  herself,  the  quaintest,  brightest 
thing,  everybody  simply  grabbed  one  for  a  souvenir. 
She  was  positively  overwhelmed  with  compliments,  and 
it  was  rather  funny,  so  many  people,  after  seeing  the 
catalogues,  wanted  her  to  design  place-cards  and  favors 
for  them.  She  had  to  tell  them  —  of  course  she  did  it 
tactfully  so  as  not  to  offend  anybody  —  that  she  never 
did  anything  like  that,  but  there  were  plenty  of  shops 
where  those  little  things  could  be  got,  or  even  done  to 
order  by  hack-workers.  The  idea  !  Evelyn  with  her 
talents  and  artistic  education  and  the  name  she  had 
made  for  herself  !  They  wouldn't  have  dreamed  of 
asking  Parrish  or  Gibson  to  do  it.  But  the  general 
public  isn't  very  appreciative  of  real  art ;  they  only 
notice  whatever  is  tremendously  advertised. 

Miss  Lucas  sold  one  picture,  "  Moonlight  on  the 
Bayou."  Julius  Gebhardt,  Esq.,  bought  it,  and  I  re 
member  to  have  seen  it  hanging  in  the  Gebhardt  draw 
ing-room  —  a  pretty  scene  of  live-oaks,  Spanish  moss, 
night-shadows,  a  mystic  trail  of  light  in  the  flat  pools, 
and  so  forth.  "He  was  so  dear  about  it,  so  much  in 
terested,  and  I  believe  would  have  given  me  any  price 
I  asked/'  Evelyn  wrote  to  Van  Cleve  afterwards.  "  We 
all  love  Mr.  Gebhardt.  I  can't  say  as  much  for  the  rest 
of  them.  Natalie  is  a  cat,  and  the  others  just  big, 
plain,  slow  creatures,  dressed  like  servant-girls  out  for 
Sunday.  But  Mr.  Gebhardt  is  a  splendid  character, 
so  strong  and  trustworthy,  and  with  it  all  has  so  much 
fun  in  him.  You  ought  to  have  seen  the  merry  little 
twinkle  in  his  eye  when  he  said  to  me  :  '  Why,  you  can 
hear  the  frogs  croak  in  that  swamp  !'  And  he  said 
beautiful  things  about  you,  Van.  Grandma  was  so 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  299 

touched  she  cried.  He  said  that  you  had  the  most 
wonderful  brain  for  finance  he  had  ever  come  across. 
He  as  good  as  told  us  he  meant  to  advance  you  to  the 
very  highest  position  in  the  bank.  'If  he  ever  needs 
money  for  any  purpose,  I  hope  he  will  not  hesitate  to 
come  to  me.  I  would  do  anything  I  could  to  help  him.7 
Those  were  his  exact  words,  so  you  see  I  haven't  ex 
aggerated.  .  .  .  The  water  here  is  as  hard  as  nails, 
it  makes  your  skin  feel  like  a  nutmeg-grater,  really  a 
dreadful  drawback  to  this  ideal  spot.  .  .  ." 

Van  Cleve  read  the  whole  of  this  letter,  as  it  happened, 
in  an  off  hour ;  and  laid  it  down  with  a  curious  look  on 
his  face,  as  he  thoughtfully  rubbed  one  hand  up  the 
back  of  his  head.  "I  give  'em  six  months,"  he  mentally 
remarked,  and  he  read  again  all  that  rhapsody  about. 
Mr.  Gebhardt  with  a  renewal  of  his  queer  expression. 
The  fact  was,  his  promotion  had  already  come ;  already 
he  was  occupying  Schlactmann's  ancient  post,  and 
within  a  year,  after  the  election  when,  Mr.  Gebhardt 
had  privately  informed  him,  they  meant  if  possible 
to  persuade  old  Mr.  O'Rourke  to  retire  from  the  board 
of  directors,  Van  Cleve  was  to  have  that  seat  too. 

" Between  you  and  me,  O'Rourke  is  entirely  too  old," 
Van's  chief  said  confidentially;  "he's  not  competent 
to  manage  any  kind  of  business  any  more.  But  the 
poor  old  fellow  clings  to  his  position  here  so,  that  you 
can't  help  feeling  it's  brutal  to  turn  him  out.  He  won't 
resign,  and  so  far  he's  been  perfectly  impervious  to 
hints,"  said  the  kind-hearted  gentleman,  with  a  rueful 
smile ;  "so  I  suppose  it's  up  to  us  to  drop  him,  as  gently 
as  we  can.  We  have  a  rule  here,  as  you  know,  that  each 
one  of  the  directors  shall  own  at  least  twenty-five  shares. 
But  if  that  over-sizes  you  a  little,  why,  I  expect  it  can 
be  arranged.  Any  of  us  would  be  willing  to  carry  you, 
I  myself,  for  that  matter  -  Nobody,  in  short,  could 
have  been  kinder,  or  declared  in  warmer  terms  his  belief 
in  his  young  friend's  uprightness  and  business  ability 


300  VAN   CLEVE: 

than  the  President  of  the  National  Loan ;  and  one  might 
have  looked  for  Van  to  show  some  gratification  at  this 
recognition,  even  to  have  been  decorously  elated  over 
his  prospects.  On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Kendrick  went 
about  his  work  with  the  same  dour  energy  as  before, 
no  more  gay  nor  agreeable  than  he  had  ever  been. 
The  duties  of  his  new  position  must  have  weighed 
heavily  on  him,  or  else  his  private  cares,  for  he  was  very 
thoughtful  and  absorbed  those  days. 

No  small  amount  of  water  has  gone  under  the  bridges 
since  then,  and  Van  Cleve  has  changed  a  good  deal ;  by 
my  count,  he  must  be  nearly  forty  years  of  age  at  the  pres 
ent  date  of  nineteen  hundred  and  twelve ;  but  he  has 
looked  forty  ever  since  he  was  twenty-five,  so  that  now, 
for  an  oddity,  he  seems  younger  rather  than  older  ! 
And  it  was  with  a  start  that  I  heard  him  the  other  day 
allude  to  the  time  when  he  was  "a  young  fellow  at  the 
National  Loan  and  Savings  Bank";  that  organization 
has  been  dead  and  buried  so  long,  as  we  measure  now 
adays.  Yet,  as  I  say,  Van  has  changed  a  good  deal ; 
he  is  much  more  genial  and  companionable  than  he  used 
to  be ;  he  takes  life  easier,  possibly  because  it  is  easier 
than  when  he  was  a  hard,  silent,  care-laden  boy,  driving 
himself  to  the  limit.  Once  in  a  while,  he  will  even  cast 
back  to  that  time,  not  with  any  soft  feeling  of  pity  or 
sympathy  for  that  earlier  self,  but  in  a  mood  of  tolerance, 
wonder,  and  perhaps  a  little  complacence.  "I  had 
one  of  those  chances  that  come  to  a  man  once  in  a  life 
time,  and  I  knew  it  too,  but  I  didn't  have  the  courage 
to  take  advantage  of  it,"  he  said  to  me  on  this  same 
occasion,  with  a  trace  of  the  humorous  pride  he  might 
have  taken  in  the  exploits  of  a  son.  And  he  told  me 
about  it.  Van  Cleve  has  never  learned  the  art  of 
polite  small-talk ;  he  will  not  change  in  that  respect  if 
he  lives  to  be  a  hundred,  arid  this  anecdote  represents 
his  notion  of  conversation  with  a  lady.  "It  was  back 
in  ninety-six,"  he  said.  "You  remember  the  Demo- 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  301 

cratic  National  Convention  that  year  ?  Remember  the 
1  crown  of  thorns  and  cross  of  gold'  ?"  And,  glancing 
at  me  and  seeing  that  I  had  assumed  the  terrier-like 
attitude  of  intelligent  listening  which  is  cultivated  by 
women  for  such  emergencies,  he  went  on:  "Yes,  but 
what  you  probably  don't  remember  or  may  not  have 
known  at  the  time  is  that  the  stock  market  was  very 
uneasy  just  then.  Standard  Oil  went  back  from  three 
hundred  and  something  to  less  than  two  hundred.  I 
think  it  was  down  to  a  hundred  and  seventy  at  one  time. 
I  was  a  young  fellow  at  the  bank  then ;  I  had  been  there 
four  or  five  years,  and  I  had  four  hundred  dollars  saved 
up ;  and  ordinarily  I'd  have  thought  of  buying  on  the 
stock  market  about  as  soon  as  I'd  have  thought  of  buy 
ing  the  Mammoth  Cave  for  a  speculation.  But  after  I 
read  that  Chicago  speech,  I  said  to  myself :  '  This 
fellow  is  either  another  Abraham  Lincoln,  or  —  or 
he  isn't.  Now  he's  going  to  make  a  speech  in  New 
York,  and  we'll  find  out.'  Well,  he  went  to  New  York 
and  he  made  the  speech,  do  you  remember  ?  At  Madi 
son  Square  Garden,  I  believe ;  and  I  went  out  and  got 
a  copy  of  the  paper  the  minute  it  was  out,  and  read  it." 

"Well?"  said  I,  a  little  at  sea,  as  he  paused.  I  do 
not  know  much  about  politics  or  the  stock  market,  one 
or  the  other,  and  for  the  life  of  me  cannot  understand 
the  connection  there  seems  to  be  between  them. 

"Well,  he  wasn't  Abraham  Lincoln,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
with  a  slight  smile;  "I  rushed  off  and  telegraphed  to 
a  fellow  I  knew  that  had  gone  from  here  to  Dominick 
&  Dominick  in  New  York,  to  buy  me  Standard  Oil  at 
anything  under  two  hundred.  But  as  quick  as  I  was, 
I  wasn't  quick  enough.  It  had  jumped  already.  He 
telegraphed  back:  'S.  0.  210.  Advise  immediately.' 
And  there  -  '  Van  Cleve  said  with  a  kind  of  smiling 
regret,  "there  is  where  I  got  cold  feet.  I  ought  to  have 
telegraphed  in  the  first  place  to  buy  at  the  market, 
but  I  didn't  have  the  nerve.  I  gave  up.  I  was  just 


302  VAN   CLEVE: 

a  young  fellow,  you  know,  and  four  hundred  dollars 
was  all  I  had  in  the  world,  and  there  were  people  de 
pending  on  me.  I  had  a  good  hunch,  but  I  didn't  have 
the  nerve."  He  shook  his  head;  and  I  preserved  my 
look  of  intelligence,  though  inwardly  unable  to  see 
the  slightest  relation  between  Standard  Oil  and  Mr. 
Bryan's  New  York  speech  ! 

The  story,  however,  vindicated,  in  some  degree,  those 
alarmists  who  are  eternally  bewailing  the  decadence 
of  the  race ;  some  of  us  are  certainly  greatly  fallen  off 
from  the  strength  and  daring  of  our  ancestors.  It 
would  not  have  been  old  Joshua  Van  Cleve,  for  an 
example,  whose  courage  would  have  failed  him ;  he 
would  never  have  got  "cold  feet."  By  just  such 
masterstrokes,  undoubtedly,  did  Joshua  accumulate 
his  fortune.  It  is  true  that  he  was  not,  at  Van  Cleve's 
age,  hampered  by  Van  Cleve's  responsibilities;  but 
very  likely  he  would  not  have  taken  them  so  seriously. 

Joshua  and  the  brussels-carpet  story  must  have  re 
curred  to  Van  Cleve  frequently  and  forcibly  that  win 
ter,  as  he  sat  beneath  the  stare  of  the  baby  in  the 
photograph,  with  the  letters  from  Pass  Christian  on  the 
table.  His  family  would  have  been  surprised  and 
shocked  could  they  have  known  what  was  passing 
though  that  wonderful  brain  for  finance.  The  letters 
multiplied  amazingly  as  the  spring  advanced.  Van 
heard  in  succession  that  the  ceaseless  wind,  at  first 
so  grateful,  had  begun  to  get  on  their  nerves ;  then  that 
the  place  had  suddenly  filled  up  with  flashy  people 
from  Pittsburgh,  Memphis,  and  elsewhere,  who  did 
nothing  but  drink  highballs  and  wear  diamonds,  and 
amongst  whom  it  would  be  useless  (in  fact,  impossible  !) 
for  Evelyn  to  look  for  either  pupils  or  purchasers; 
then  that  they  had  had  a  terrifying  cloud-burst ;  then 
that  the  price  of  everything  had  gone  up  until  it  was  as 
bad  as  in  New  York ;  and  for  a  climax,  as  summer 
came  on,  that  the  town  was  all  but  deserted,  the  heat 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  303 

and  dampness  absolutely  tropical,  the  moonlight  so 
intolerably  brilliant  that  nobody  could  sleep  at  night, 
and  that  there  was  grave  danger  to  northern  people, 
who  were  invariably  the  first  victims,  from  yellow  fever, 
which  was  liable  to  break  out  there  at  any  time  ! 

Over  this  last  item,  Mr.  Kendrick  knotted  his  brows 
in  some  slight  worry ;  he  had  paid  very  little  heed  to  the 
other  complaints,  even  smiling  broadly  at  more  than 
one  of  the  tragic  statements.  But  Van  had  had  ex 
perience  along  the  southern  coasts;  he  thought  of 
Siboney,  the  hospital  tents  and  huts,  the  sick  faces,  the 
hot  breath  of  the  jungle.  "  Perhaps  for  the  heated 
term,  you  had  better  come  up  here.  I  can  get  you 
rooms  at  The  Altamont,  I  find,  and  though  this  town 
isn't  considered  much  of  a  summer  resort,  you  will  be 
in  a  great  deal  cooler  and  pleasanter  place  than  southern 
Mississippi,"  he  wrote  them.  His  intentions  were  of 
the  best,  but  alack,  as  once  before  in  his  career,  Van 
was  not  quick  enough  !  Already  the  family  had  con 
ceived  a  plan  infinitely  more  picturesque  and  attractive ; 
and  with  them,  as  he  knew  to  his  cost,  to  make  a  plan 
meant  to  carry  it  out.  It  was  with  a  face  of  ill  omen  that 
he  read  the  enthusiastic  letter  which  crossed  his  on  the 
way. 

Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  was  the  ultimate  Paradise  ! 
This  was  established  by  another  shower  of  statistics, 
and  sound,  unassailable  reasoning.  They  would  go 
to  New  Orleans,  and  from  there  by  boat,  themselves 
and  their  chattels,  to  New  York,  where  they  would 
trans-ship  for  Halifax,  a  way  of  travel  so  cheap  that  it 
would  only  take  four  hundred  dollars,  and  Evelyn 
would  put  in  her  seventy-five  from  "  Moonlight  on  the 
Bayou,"  so  that  it  would  not  come  so  hard  on  Van 
Cleve,  dear,  generous  boy  that  he  always  was  !  They 
would  not  think  of  asking  him  for  this  now,  but  it  was 
a  matter  of  life  and  death.  They  were  all  losing 
strength  day  by  day,  and  the  doctor  told  them  that  if 


304  VAN   CLEVE: 

they  waited,  their  vitality  might  become  so  diminished 
they  would  not  have  the  energy  to  move.  Immediately 
after  this  there  came  another  letter,  commenting  on 
his  own  suggestion  with  gentle  amusement ;  it  was  sweet 
of  him  to  plan  for  them,  but  he  was  not  in  a  position 
to  know  the  circumstances  and  what  they  needed. 
Only  see  how  much  better  Halifax  would  be  !  And 
they  proceeded  to  point  out  its  superiority  on  a  score 
of  different  counts.  Perhaps  at  this  juncture  Van 
Cleve  again  remembered  the  carpet  anecdote;  he 
answered  very  briefly. 

There  ensued  upon  this  a  brisk  correspondence  of 
which,  fortunately,  only  a  few  scraps  of  letters  have 
survived.  I  say  fortunately,  because  it  could  not  have 
been  agreeable  reading,  to  judge  by  the  samples,  nor 
particularly  creditable  to  any  of  the  writers.  Van  Cleve 
told  them  that  he  could  not,  offhand,  pick  up  such  a 
sum  as  they  asked,  and  in  plain  words  that  he  would 
not  if  he  could.  That  he  was  willing  to  believe  that 
Pass  Christian  was  not  a  pleasant  or  healthy  place 
during  the  summer,  and  so  offered  them  a  reasonable 
change;  but  that,  as  to  moving  them  to  Nova  Scotia 
or  anywhere  else  again,  he  had  no  more  money  to  spend 
on  such  whims.  And  he  wound  up  by  intimating  in 
terms  that  were  not  wholly  unkind  that  this  was  his 
last  word ;  they  could  take  it  or  leave  it. 

No  outsider  could  describe,  no  outsider  could  even 
comprehend  the  effect  of  this  bombshell  upon  the  ladies, 
upon  Major  Stanton,  who  was  the  soul  of  patience  and 
amiability  himself,  and  had  never  contradicted  anybody 
in  his  life.  For  persons  who  were,  as  they  honestly 
believed  themselves  to  be,  in  an  all  but  dying  condition 
from  the  dreadful  circumstances  of  existence  at  Pass 
Christian,  it  was  astounding  with  how  much  vigor  the 
ladies  remonstrated,  how  much  ink  and  time  and  mental 
effort  they  expended.  "You  poor  darling,  I  know  you 
are  afraid  you  would  never  get  your  money  back!" 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  305 

Mrs.  Lucas  wrote;  "but  of  course  we  mean  to  repay 
you,  Van  Cleve.  We  know  how  hard  you  work  for 
your  money,  and  you  are  right  to  think  that  you  have 
done  enough  for  us.  We  only  ask  you  to  advance  this. 
Evelyn  will  repay  you,  we  will  all  pay  you,  if  we  have 
to  work  our  fingers  to  the  bone." 

I  daresay  Mrs.  Lucas,  who  was  a  thoroughly  good 
woman,  would  have  been  dumbfounded  to  see  the  pain 
and  anger  on  her  nephew's  face  when  he  read  her  letter; 
it  was  perfectly  true  that  they  owed  him  their  living, 
every  comfort  and  every  pleasure  for  ten  years,  since 
the  first  day  Van  had  gone  to  work ;  then  why  should 
he  have  felt  bitterly  hurt  and  even  insulted  at  their 
offering  to  pay  him,  if  only  a  little  ?  She  would  not 
have  been  able  to  understand  it.  She  was  a  good 
woman,  and  she  would  have  told  you  that  she  loved 
Van  Cleve  devotedly  and  would  do  anything  on  earth 
for  him  —  anything  ! 

The  young  man  ignored  this  handsome  proposal; 
he  repeated  his  own.  They  could  come  to  Cincinnati 
or  not  for  the  summer  —  as  they  chose.  They  chose 
not ;  and  it  would  appear  that  Van  Cleve  had  not  un- 
profitably  followed  his  grandfather's  example,  for  the 
family,  Evelyn,  Mrs.  Lucas,  some  one  of  them,  must 
have  been  stung  into  some  kind  of  action.  However 
they  raised,  or  saved,  the  money,  they  did  move  to 
Halifax,  bag  and  baggage,  the  beginning  of  August. 


CHAPTER   III 

OWING  TO  ILLNESS  IN  THE  FAMILY,   Miss  GILBERT 

REGRETS,  ETC. 

IT  was  a  matter  of  occasional  comment  that  Lorrie 
showed  so  little  sign  of  the  real  trial  and  suffering  she 
had  had  to  undergo.  A  heartbreaking  thing  had  hap 
pened  to  the  poor  girl,  but  she  never  allowed  herself 
to  look  heartbroken.  Lorrie  apparently  did  not  dream 
of  putting  on  black  for  her  dead  lover,  or  of  going  about 
enveloped  in  a  romantic  melancholy.  On  the  con 
trary,  she  dressed  herself  as  neatly  and  prettily  as  ever, 
and  went  to  church,  and  made  calls  with  her  mother, 
and  when  winter  came  on  and  the  season  of  receptions 
and  parties  opened,  was  to  be  found  at  her  station 
behind  the  tea-tray  or  in  the  receiving  line  almost  as 
often  as  formerly.  Her  character  forbade  any  sort 
of  posturing,  morbid  dwelling  on  her  woes,  or  exploiting 
them  before  her  family  and  friends.  In  this  as  in  most 
of  the  other  acts  of  her  life  she  was  the  same  bright, 
sweet,  and  sensible  woman,  the  same  good,  conscientious 
daughter  and  sister  that  she  had  always  been ;  and  in 
the  opinion  of  one  person,  a  whole  hogshead  of  tears 
and  hours  of  daily  lamentation  would  not  have  done 
her  so  much  honor  as  the  brave  efforts  she  made  to 
forget  her  trouble,  or  at  least  to  put  it  out  of  sight,  for 
the  sake  of  other  people. 

If  she  spent  an  hour  every  night  going  over  Philip's 
letters,  or  sitting  silently  before  his  photograph,  and 
cried  herself  to  sleep  afterwards,  no  one  knew  anything 
about  it.  She  always  wore  his  ring  ;  it  had  never  been 
off  her  finger  since  he  himself  put  it  there  and  "  kissed 

306 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  307 

it  on"  as  he  said  —  and  Lorrie  could  see  him  now  bend 
ing  over  her  hand,  caressing  it,  as  he  half-knelt  beside 
her  at  their  old  sofa  ;  she  could  see  his  stooped  head  with 
the  thick,  smooth,  fair  hair  that  she  had  always  wanted 
to  stroke  —  ah  me  !  It  was  all  over ;  it  had  come  and 
gone  like  a  dream  that  ended  in  a  nightmare.  She 
thought  of  the  journey  south  —  Tampa  —  the  crowds 
hurrahing  —  the  lonely  days  —  the  two  nurses  with 
their  officious  sympathy — her  mother's  distracted 
letters  about  Bob  —  she  thought  of  it  all,  and  some 
times,  when  she  looked  in  her  glass,  wondered  at  the 
fresh  and  unmarked  youthfulness  of  the  face  that  looked 
her  back.  She  had  not  a  gray  hair  nor  a  wrinkle,  yet 
she  was  twenty-nine  years  old  and  had  put  happiness 
—  of  one  kind  —  out  of  her  life  forever.  She  did  not 
often  speak  of  Cortwright,  or  that  dreadful  time ;  and 
even  her  mother  never  saw  Lorrie  cry  except  the  day 
when  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  brought  her  and  Robert 
home,  when  the  girl  had  clung  to  her  father  and  sobbed 
hard  for  a  brief  moment ;  and  one  other  time  when  Mrs. 
Gilbert,  with  tears  in  her  own  eyes,  went  to  her  with 
the  little  store  of  towels,  napkins,  dainty  linens  marked 
with  a  monogram  L.  G.  C.  upon  which  they  had  both 
been  working  a  century  ago  before  anything  happened. 
The  skeins  of  white  embroidery-cotton  were  still  folded 
in  with  them;  there  was  a  needle  yet  sticking  in  the 
stitch.  "I'm  going  to  lock  them  up  in  a  trunk,  Lorrie," 
Mrs.  Gilbert  said;  "I  know  you  can't  bear  to  look  at 
them." 

"No,  no,  we  oughtn't  to  do  that  —  we  oughtn't  to 
waste  them.  You  ought  to  use  them,  don't  you  think  ? 
I  don't  mind  —  truly  I  don't,"  said  Lorrie,  with  a 
pitiful  resolution  and  cheerfulness.  But  her  mother 
looked  in  her  face,  and  both  women  broke  down.  Mrs. 
Gilbert  took  the  things  away  and  locked  them  up,  as  she 
said,  in  a  trunk  in  the  attic ;  and  there  they  lie,  yellow 
ing,  to  this  day. 


308  VAN   CLEVE: 

Some  time  during  the  summer  there  arrived  a  letter 
from  Philip's  father,  somewhat  to  the  surprise  of  the 
Gilbert  family,  to  whom  he  had  never  made  any  mention 
of  the  old  gentleman,  and  who  had  supposed  that  both 
his  parents  were  dead.  There  was  nothing  mysterious 
about  the  elder  Cortwright,  however,  as  it  quickly 
appeared ;  his  son's  neglect  or  forgetfulness,  indeed, 
needed  no  explanation  to  the  Gilberts,  who  knew  by 
dreary  experience  that  young  men  do  not  always  keep 
in  touch  with  their  homes  and  their  people.  Mr. 
Cortwright  senior  wrote  Lorrie  a  grave  and  dignified 
letter,  referring  to  their  common  loss  in  adequate  terms ; 
if  the  Judge's  periods  were  a  little  too  flourishingly 
rounded,  it  came  not  ill,  nevertheless,  from  a  man  of 
his  birth  and  age  and  upbringing;  and  when  he  con 
cluded  by  inviting  himself  to  make  them  a  visit  in  the 
fall,  in  order,  as  he  said,  to  become  acquainted  with 
his  dear  boy's  choice  of  a  wife  —  a  matter  in  which 
the  Judge  did  not  doubt  Philip  had  been  happy  and 
lucky  beyond  his  deserts  —  the  Gilberts  were  ready 
enough  to  receive  him.  When  the  day  came,  the  Pro 
fessor  hurried  through  his  papers  after  class  to  get 
down  to  the  Southern  Railway  Depot  to  meet  their 
guest,  without  much  idea  of  what  he  would  look  like, 
but  eager  in  hospitality,  and  willing  to  take  any  trouble 
on  Lome's  account.  Samuel  was  not  a  practical  man ; 
and  though  he  was  confident  of  miraculously  stumbling 
upon  Judge  Cortwright  and  knowing  him  at  once,  he 
might  have  been  there  still,  helplessly  peering  with  his 
near-sighted  eyes,  and  confounded  by  the  size  of  the 
crowds,  and  the  insane  desire  which  everybody  dis 
played  to  get  somewhere  at  top  speed,  had  not  the  judge 
cannily  picked  him  out  himself.  Judge  Cortwright 
was  thoroughly  practical ;  and  having  been  in  his  day 
an  owner  of  race-horses,  and  a  poker-player  of  mighty 
renown,  had  probably  made  some  study  of  his  fellow- 
man. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  309 

Professor  Gilbert  had  just  been  vaguely  speculating 
about  the  large,  tall,  Southern-looking  man,  who  might 
have  been  their  guest,  but  for  the  fact  that  he  was  ac 
companied  by  a  plump,  highly  colored,  giggling  young 
woman  in  a  bright  dress  and  feathers,  chains  of  beads, 
and  dangling,  glittering  gewgaws  —  I  say  the  Pro 
fessor  had  just  remarked  this  pair,  and  decided  against 
them,  when  the  big  man,  after  a  sharp  look  at  him, 
walked  up  and  spoke. 

"Am  I  mistaken,  or  is  this  Professor  Gilbert?"  he 
said  in  a  deep,  rich,  husky  voice ;  and  as  the  Professor 
dazedly  put  out  his  hand,  Judge  Cortwright  took  and 
shook  it  warmly.  "If  there  had  been  time,  I  should 
have  written  you  word  not  to  put  yourself  out  to  come 
and  meet  me,  sir,  but  when  your  letter  announcing 
your  intention  of  so  doing  came,  I  was  upon  the  point 
of  starting,  sir. — 

"Not  at  all  —  not  at  all  —  I  am  very  glad  to.  The 
young  lady  is  your  daughter,  I  suppose?  We  shall 
be  very  happy  to  have  her  with  us.  My  wife  and 
daughter  will  be  delighted  -  stammered  Samuel, 
completely  taken  aback;  and  wondering  inwardly 
if  they  were  prepared  at  home  for  the  extra  visitor,  as 
he  advanced  to  greet  her.  She  stared  at  him,  and  at  the 
Judge,  and  burst  into  a  loud  laugh,  rather  disconcerting 
to  the  well-meaning  gentleman.  He  stopped  short 
awkwardly. 

"Ahem  —  no,  sir  —  oh,  no,  this  is  a  young  lady  from 
my  part  of  the  world,  who  happened  to  be  coming  up 
on  the  same  train  with  me,"  said  Judge  Cortwright, 
suavely.  He  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  explain  that 
he  had  never  met  the  young  lady  before.  "Miss  Nettie 
Frye,  sir,  who  is  intending  to  make  a  stay  in  your  city." 

Professor  Gilbert,  feeling  dimly  disquieted,  he  did 
not  know  why,  bowed  rather  stiffly.  Miss  Nettle  Frye 
laughed  again.  "Say,  that's  one  on  you,  him  taking 
me  for  your  daughter,  ain't  it?"  she  said  to  the  Judge 


310  VAN   CLEVE: 

with  charming  frankness.  Samuel  never  knew  how 
or  when  or  where  they  parted  from  this  attractive  young 
person.  He  offered  mildly  to  take  charge  of  the 
judge's  valise ;  there  was  a  good  deal  of  noise  and 
pushing  among  the  crowd ;  he  had  an  impression  that 
he  saw  the  judge  escorting  her  to  a  cab  with  amiable, 
although  not  precisely  fatherly,  attentions ;  and  he  said 
to  himself  that  he  never  had  seen  any  young  woman 
roll  her  eyes  in  such  an  extraordinary  way.  Certainly 
none  of  those  in  his  classes  did  ! 

The  Professor,  however,  was  adding  to  his  experiences 
at  a  rapid  rate.  Judge  Cortwright,  it  turned  out,  knew 
the  city  quite  well,  parts  of  it,  I  daresay,  much  better 
than  his  anxious  and  somewhat  bewildered  host,  though 
he  had  not  visited  it  for  ten  years.  Under  his  guidance, 
they  stopped  on  the  way  home  and  had  a  drink  at 
"The  Mecca"  while  waiting  for  their  car.  Samuel 
had  never  been  inside  "The  Mecca"  in  his  life;  he 
could  not  have  distinguished  a  "first-class  saloon" 
as  his  companion  assured  him  it  was  —  from  a  third 
class,  or  one  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  scale,  for  that 
matter ;  and  without  doubt  he  made  a  queer  and 
laughable  figure  in  the  midst  of  the  mahogany  and 
plate-glass  and  marble  and  dazzling  brass  fittings. 
"I  —  I  am  not  very  fond  of  anything  strong,"  he  said 
shyly ;  since  Robert  grew  up  and  fell  into  his  deplorable 
habits,  the  father  had  never  taken  a  drink  of  any 
kind  of  liquor.  "I  mean  I  find  it  doesn't  agree  with 
me,"  he  added  hastily,  fearful  of  assuming  a  priggish 
attitude  of  disapproval.  "Would  it  be  possible  to  get 
a  glass  of  water  here  ?" 

"Sure!  Fizz?"  said  the  barkeeper,  cordially.  The 
barkeeper,  to  Professor  Gilbert's  bottomless  astonish 
ment,  was  a  clean,  tidy,  muscular,  civil,  decent  young 
man,  with  an  eye  and  complexion  that  would  indicate 
absolute  temperance  !  "Milk  if  you  want  it.  Butter 
milk?  Sure!"  He  divided  a  quick  and  measuring 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  311 

glance  between  them,  probably  allowing  himself  some 
private  speculation  about  so  oddly  assorted  a  pair  of 
customers.  "Whiskey  for  yours,  Colonel  ?  What  brand 
you  using  now  ?  "  he  genially  inquired,  and,  reaching  a 
tentative  hand  to  the  row  of  bottles,  by  some  magic 
singled  out  exactly  the  one  of  Judge  Cortwright's  choice  ! 
Thus  with  a  libation  did  the  Judge's  visit  begin. 
Whatever  he  thought  of  his  host,  it  was  nothing  to  the 
confusion  of  mind  with  which  his  host  regarded  him. 
Samuel  felt  with  dismay  that  he  did  not  know  what  to 
do  with  Judge  Cortwright.  For  all  his  mutton-chop 
side- whiskers,  and  his  pedagogue's  view  of  life,  the 
Virginia  gentleman,  after  forty  years'  absence  from  his 
native  State,  was  still  enough  of  a  Virginian  to  under 
stand  the  Kentuckian,  in  a  fashion.  He  may  not  have 
considered  it  altogether  seemly  for  a  man  of  his  own 
age,  or  a  shade  older,  to  have  the  eye  for  women,  the 
not  too  nice  taste  in  speech  and  anecdote,  the  fondness 
for  high-proof  bourbon  and  the  other  lively,  youthful 
traits  their  visitor  presently  displayed,  but  the  Pro 
fessor  remembered  to  have  seen  and  known  more  than 
one  man  of  just  such  a  type  in  his  own  far-away  young 
days,  and  they  were  worthy  enough  citizens ;  he  was 
not  disposed  to  criticise.  But  he  knew  very  well  that 
his  house  and  company  were  not  of  the  kind  the  judge 
was  used  to,  or  would  ordinarily  seek ;  it  worried  him. 
Possibly  his  wife  was  not  so  lenient,  nor  for  once  so 
hospitable  in  spirit ;  I  don't  think  the  little  lady  much 
fancied  Philip  Cortwright's  father.  "Well,  anyhow, 
Lorrie  was  only  going  to  marry  his  son.  She  didn't 
have  to  marry  the  whole  family,"  she  remarked  apropos 
of  nothing,  as  they  were  getting  into  bed  that  night. 
As  for  Lorrie,  nobody  knew  what  she  thought,  not  even 
her  own  father  and  mother.  Other  people  noticed  a 
rather  terrifying  likeness  between  the  father  and  son  ; 
onet  could  not  help  wondering  if  Philip  would  have  aged 
in  the  same  way. 


312  VAN   CLEVE: 

Mr.  Van  Cleve  Kendrick,  coming  up  to  the  house 
and  meeting  the  Judge,  found  means  to  take  him  off 
their  hands  for  part  of  the  time,  much  to  the  relief  of 
everybody  concerned,  including  Judge  Cortwright 
himself,  who  must  have  found  the  Gilbert  society  a 
little  dull  after  a  day  or  so  of  it.  Van  always  looked 
queer  when  questioned  about  this  experience.  "  Judge 
Cortwright?  Oh,  yes.  Great  old  sport!"  he  would 
say  with  an  enigmatic  grin;  "yes,  I  took  him  across 
the  river  to  Latonia  to  the  races  several  times,  while 
he  was  here.  Hey  ?  Oh,  yes,  I  had  him  down  at  the 
club  playing  pool.  Great  old  sport !"  And  sometimes 
other  men  commented  wonderingly  on  the  fact  that 
Kendrick,  who  was  as  respectable  a  man  as  you  could 
find  anywhere,  was  everlastingly  loading  himself  up 
with  some  down-and-outer,  some  thoroughgoing  bum 
to  take  care  of  and  police  around  ! 

They  were  not  without  justification,  for  later  on, 
when  Robert  Gilbert  suddenly  came  back  from  the 
West  and  was  seen  about  our  streets  once  more,  it  was 
more  often  than  not  with  Van  Cleve.  Bob  was  very 
much  better  —  cured,  according  to  his  own  report  - 
and  appeared  to  have  straightened  up  at  last ;  that  is, 
he  was  always  straight  in  Van  Cleve' s  company;  and 
either  Van,  or  Lorrie,  or  his  mother,  was  with  him  most 
of  the  time.  I  saw  him  with  the  family  in  church  one 
Thanksgiving  morning  ;  by  this  time,  he  had  been  away 
for  a  year  in  that  climate  which  is  supposed  to  be  almost 
a  specific  for  cases  of  tuberculosis,  if  taken  soon  enough, 
as  the  family  insisted  his  had  been ;  but,  to  tell  the 
truth,  in  spite  of  all  the  sanguine  talk,  Bob's  "cure" 
was  unconvincing.  He  did  not  look  like  a  well  man; 
still,  he  was  not  coughing  nearly  so  much,  and  he  was 
by  nature  of  a  thin  and  slender  build,  so  that  in 
dicated  nothing.  It  was  touching  to  see  Mrs.  Gilbert 
mothering  him ;  the  church  was  draughty,  and  she  put 
a  knitted  scarf  about  the  back  of  his  neck,  which  the 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  313 

young  man  twitched  off  fretfully.  Then,  seeing  the 
anxiety  on  her  face,  he  picked  the  thing  up  and  fum- 
blingly  adjusted  it  again,  repentant.  Poor  Bob,  poor 
sinner,  there  was  always  something  sweet  about  him. 

He  was  at  home  all  that  winter,  housed  for  weeks  at 
a  time  with  what  they  called  heavy  colds ;  Lorrie  gave 
up  going  out  almost  entirely  so  as  to  stay  with  him, 
read  to  him,  keep  him  entertained.  Robert  would 
not  have  exacted  any  such  sacrifice  ;  he  used  to  urge  her 
to  accept  her  invitations.  "You  ought  to  go,  Lorrie; 
you  oughtn't  to  stay  here  shut  up  in  the  house.  It's 
bad  enough  for  me  to  be  jailed  this  way,  let  alone  all 
the  rest  of  you,"  he  said  half  irritably.  "Hang  it,  I 
wish  you'd  go  out  and  hear  something  new  or  see  some 
thing  new  so  you  could  come  back  and  tell  us  about  it ! " 

"All  right,  Bob,  I'll  go  then.  Maybe  Van  Cleve 
will  come  over  this  evening,  anyhow,"  said  Lorrie,  to 
please  him. 

"He  doesn't  have  to.  I  don't  have  to  have  some 
body  hanging  around  me  the  whole  time,"  Bob  said, 
grumbling.  Then  he  added  apologetically  :  "It  worries 
me  to  see  all  of  you  so  worried.  There's  nothing  really 
to  worry  about.  I'll  be  all  right  in  a  little,  as  soon  as 
this  cold  wears  off.  A  cold  always  has  knocked  me  out ; 
don't  you  remember  how  they  used  to  when  I  was  a 
little  fellow?  Don't  you  remember,  Lorrie?"  he 
insisted. 

"Yes,  you've  always  had  a  horrid  time  with  colds," 
said  Lorrie,  with  a  twinge  at  her  heart. 

"Well  then,  you  know  it's  not  serious.  Why  don't 
you  and  Mother  go  on  to  your  teas  and  luncheons  and 
things?  I'm  not  going  to  open  all  the  doors  and 
windows  and  let  the  furnace  go  out,  and  go  and  roll 
in  the  snow  with  nothing  on  but  my  pajamas,  just 
because  you  aren't  here  to  watch  me  !" 

"I  —  I  don't  really  care  much  about  it  now,  Bob, 
not  the  way  I  used  to,"  Lorrie  said  at  last.  Her  brother 


314  VAN   CLEVE: 

stopped  his  half -laughing,  half-vexed  remonstrances, 
eying  her  with  a  new  expression  in  which  there  was 
compassion  and  regret  and  something  else,  some  other 
feeling  compounded,  one  would  have  said,  of  doubt  and 
distress. 

"You  mustn't  let  yourself  think  about  that.  You 
oughtn't  to  let  yourself  dwell  on  it.  On  poor  Phil, 
I  mean,"  he  said  gravely. 

"I  don't  any  more  than  I  can  help.  I  try  not  to. 
But  you  know  I  can't  forget,  Bob." 

Bob,  who  had  been  lying  on  the  sofa  among  pillows 
and  magazines  with  an  afghan  spread  over  his  thin 
knees,  threw  everything  aside  and  got  up  and  began 
to  walk  about  the  room  restlessly.  "You  must  stop 
that  kind  of  brooding,  I  tell  you,  Lorrie,"  he  said, 
pausing  by  her  low  chair.  He  spoke  nervously,  almost 
angrily.  "Can't  forget!  Why,  remembering  won't 
bring  him  back.  And  if  it  did  -  "he  broke  off  abruptly. 
"If  it  did,  things  mightn't  be  the  same,"  he  finished, 
in  an  uncertain  voice.  He  took  another  turn  up  and 
down  the  room  and  came  back  to  her  chair.  "I 
thought  —  I  thought  maybe  you  were  beginning  —  I 
hoped  maybe  you'd  --Van  Cleve,  you  know,  Lorrie  - 
Van's  a  splendid  fellow  —  I  don't  believe  he's  ever 
looked  at  any  other  girl  in  his  life  - 

"Oh,  don't,  Bob  —  oh,  please  don't!  I  can't  think 
about  that  any  more,  ever.  It's  not  just  Van  Cleve  - 
it's  just  that  I  can't  think  of  marrying  anybody.  It's 
all  over  and  done  with.  Don't  you  see?  It's  all  out 
of  my  life,"  Lorrie  said  painfully.  "Don't  talk  to 
me  about  it  again.  I  try  not  to  be  silly.  I  try  not 
to  be  selfish.  I  try  to  keep  it  to  myself.  You  want 
to  help  me,  don't  you?  You  want  to  make  it  easier 
for  me?" 

"Lord  knows  that's  what  I've  wanted  to  do,  Lorrie. 
Lord  knows  that's  what  I  ought  to  do  after  the  time 
you've  had  with  me  !"  Bob  groaned  out.  He  dropped 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  315 

on  the  sofa  with  his  head  in  his  two  hands.  "I  don't 
want  to  make  a  mess  of  any  more  lives.  I  only  thought 
you  and  Van  Cleve  —  well,  all  right  then,  Lorrie,  I 
wxm't  say  any  more.  I  won't  speak  about  it  again." 

So  when  Van  Cleve,  who  averaged  about  two  even 
ings  a  week  —  thus  gossip  calculated  —  came  over  at 
eight  o'clock  that  night,  Lorrie,  true  to  her  promise,  had 
gone  to  somebody's  dinner  and  theatre-party  afterwards; 
and  Van  sat  down  to  a  game  of  checkers  with  his  friend 
without  appearing  especially  cast  down  by  her  absence. 
It  has  been  said  many  times  that  he  was  a  philosopher. 
If  the  truth  were  known,  if  Robert  had  known  it,  before 
he  blunderingly  and  good-heartedly  put  in  his  oar,  Van 
Cleve  had  already  spoken  for  himself  to  Lorrie  and  had 
got  his  answer. 

"I  think  a  great  deal  of  you,  Van,  but  not  that  way," 
the  girl  said,  sincerely  pained  at  having  to  pain  him ; 
" you're  the  best  friend  we  have.  I'll  never  forget  all 
you've  done  for  us  —  for  Bob  —  " 

Van  Cleve  interrupted  her.  "  Don't  talk  about  that. 
Don't  think  that  way.  Even  if  it  were  so,  I  wouldn't 
want  to  hold  that  over  you,  or  have  you  hold  it  over 
yourself,"  he  said  harshly.  "Put  all  that  out  of  the 
question.  This  is  just  you  and  me.  You  don't  —  you 
can't  —  "he  fumbled  and  reddened  like  a  boy  over  the 
words,  but  went  on  —  "you  don't  love  me  —  you  don't 
feel  as  if  you  could  marry  me,  even  if  there  hadn't  ever 
been  anybody  else,  is  that  it  ?  Or  —  or  is  it  because  of 
him,  Lorrie?" 

Lorrie  nodded,  her  lips  quivering.  "Oh,  Van,  you 
dear  boy,"  she  said  brokenly,  and  put  out  her  hand  to 
him.  "You  are  always  our  Van  Cleve,  the  man  I  like 
and  respect  more  than  anybody  else  in  the  world. 
But  I  can't  marry  you.  I  can't  marry  anybody.  I 
feel  somehow  as  if  I  were  a  mean  creature  because  I 
can't  do  the  only  thing  you've  ever  wanted  me  to  do  — 
I  can't  give  you  the  only  thing  you've  ever  asked  of  me. 


316  VAN   CLEVE: 

But  would  you  think  any  the  more  of  me  if  I  forgot  so 
easily,  Van  Cleve?" 

He  did  not  answer  her  directly.  "Well,  I  waited/' 
he  said  at  last  with  a  quick  sigh;  "I  thought  you 
might  have  gotten  over  it.  But  you  haven't  got  any 
thing  to  reproach  yourself  with.  You  never  encouraged 
me ;  you  are  just  you,  and  I  couldn't  help  loving  you 
and  you  couldn't  have  stopped  me." 

"Van  Cleve,  I  wish  I  could  care  for  you  that  way," 
said  Lorrie,  earnestly ;  "I  wish  I  could  !  You  ought  to 
have  everything  you  want,  you've  always  been  so  good 
to  everybody." 

"Nobody  cares  for  people  because  they're  good," 
said  Van,  with  his  dry  smile.  He  looked  at  her  wist 
fully.  "You  don't  mind  my  keeping  on  coming  here? 
It  won't  annoy  you  ?  After  all,  you  must  have  known 
how  I  felt  long  before  this." 

"Why  —  I  —  I-  "Lorrie  turned  scarlet  under  his 
shrewd,  kind  eyes ;  and  Van  Cleve  smiled  again. 

"Well,  then,  it  won't  be  any  different  from  what  it 
was  before,"  he  said,  practical  as  usual.  "Don't 
worry,  Lorrie.  I'm  not  going  to  persecute  you  about 
this.  If  you  should  ever  feel  differently  —  why,  I'm 
here,  that's  all." 

And  on  this  footing  the  old  intimacy  continued, 
Romeo  playing  his  part  with  a  cheerfulness  and  self- 
control  in  the  very  presence,  as  it  were,  of  his  blighted 
hopes,  that  go  to  show  of  what  exceedingly  un-Romeo- 
like,  plain,  serviceable  stuff  his  character  was  con 
structed.  People  would  talk,  of  course;  but  gossip 
was  rather  disarmed  and  put  out  of  countenance  by 
the  lack  of  romance  about  the  proceedings.  The  hero, 
for  one  thing,  was  quite  as  attentive  and  devoted  to 
Mrs.  Gilbert  as  to  Lorrie,  and  always  in  a  perfectly 
workaday,  efficient  style ;  yes,  I  have  known  Mr. 
Kendrick,  in  one  of  those  domestic  crises  that  will 
sometimes  occur,  to  rise  up,  put  on  his  hat,  and  go 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  317 

forth  and  rout  out  a  colored  cook  or  laundress  or  woman- 
by-the-day  from  the  fastnesses  of  Symmes  Street,  where 
these  do  mostly  abide,  and  return  with  her  to  Mrs. 
Gilbert  when  advertising  and  intelligence  bureaus  and 
every  other  means  had  failed  !  What  a  performance 
for  a  Romeo  !  But  can  you  show  me  another  lover  who 
has  done  as  much  ?  Van  was  more  like  an  elder  son 
in  the  house  than  ever,  lending  a  hand  to  taking  care 
of  Bob  and  amusing  him,  consulted  about  their  small 
finances,  giving  Lorrie  presents  on  her  birthday  and 
at  Christmas,  which  even  her  suspicious  girl  friends 
would  allow  seemed  to  have  no  sentimental  significance 
whatever,  patient,  thoughtful,  sane,  reliable,  prosaic 
in  his  relations  with  them  as  he  had  always  been  with 
all  the  world. 

And  where,  all  this  while,  was  Mrs.  Robert  Gilbert 
and  what  was  she  doing  whose  place  was  surely  with 
her  husband  in  his  ill-health  —  his  temporary  ill-health, 
as  the  family  were  so  bent  on  making  the  outside  world 
believe,  on  making  themselves  believe,  perhaps  ?  Where 
indeed?  Nobody  liked  to  ask  after  the  first  innocent 
ventures,  which  were  received  by  the  Gilberts  with  a 
stilted  and  evasive  courtesy  so  unlike  them  that  the 
slowest-witted  acquaintance  they  had  must  have  seen 
at  once  that  something  was  wrong.  Bob's  wife  never 
came  near  him ;  it  was  to  be  doubted  if  he  ever  even 
heard  from  her ;  the  last  authoritative  news  was  that 
she  was  living  with  her  mother  in  New  York.  Some 
body  had  met  her  there  on  the  street,  and  said  that  she 
was  just  as  pretty  as  ever,  though  a  good  deal  "made 
up,"  and  that  her  manners  were  unchanged,  and  that 
she  never  said  a  word  about  Bob  ;  if  the  Gilberts  knew 
her  address,  it  was  as  much  as  they  knew  about  Paula, 
and  probably  it  was  all  they  wanted  to  know,  as  some 
body  remarked  significantly.  The  marriage  had  evi 
dently  turned  out  one  of  those  hasty  ones  to  be  repented 
at  leisure  which  many  of  us  had  suspected  on  first 


318  VAN   CLEVE: 

hearing  of  it.  They  couldn't  get  along.  How  could 
they  have  been  expected  to  get  along?  That  little 
Jameson  girl  had  no  sense,  and,  to  speak  plainly,  Bob 
Gilbert  was  not  heavily  endowed  that  way  either,  in 
addition  to  being  morally  pretty  unstable.  He  would 
never  take  care  of  himself,  let  alone  support  a  wife  and 
family.  To  be  sure,  Paula  very  likely  had  some  money, 
but  how  long  would  that  last  them  ?  And  when  it  was 
gone,  the  Gilberts  could  not,  and  that  big,  overdressed, 
flashy  Mrs.  Jameson  certainly  would  not,  help  them. 
Every  one  felt  genuinely  sorry  for  Bob's  family,  to 
whom  the  whole  affair  must  be  such  a  trial ;  it  was  not 
disgraceful,  it  was  merely  shabby,  but  people  of  good 
name  and  good  breeding  really  suffer  in  such  circum 
stances. 

At  about  the  time  that  everybody  came  to  these 
conclusions  it  was  reported  that  Bob  was  to  be  sent  to 
some  place  in  Vermont,  some  little  town  in  the  moun 
tains  where  a  well-known  physician  had  established  a 
sanatorium  for  such  cases  as  his.  His  mother  and  Van 
Kendrick  took  him  on  east ;  and  only  a  day  or  so  after 
they  had  gone  there  came  out  in  the  court  proceedings 
published  in  the  morning  papers,  a  notice  which  caused 
whatever  readers  stumbled  on  it  a  certain  surprise  and 
satisfaction,  as  at  an  oracle  fulfilled.  In  the  Court  of 
Insolvency,  No.  2459  (June  17,  1901),  Paula  J.  Gilbert 
brought  suit  for  divorce  against  Robert  D.  Gilbert. 
They  were  married  in  July,  1898 ;  she  charged  him  with 
desertion  and  non-support,  and  petitioned  the  court  to 
annul  the  marriage  and  restore  her  maiden  name. 
Marks,  Schindler  &  Marks,  attorneys. 


CHAPTER   IV 

IN  WHICH  THE  UNITED  STATES  COMMISSIONER  ISSUES 
A  WARRANT 

THE  Gilbert  vs.  Gilbert  action  did  not  afford  much 
material  for  wagging  of  tongues ;  it  went  through 
court  as  speedily  and  quietly  as  possible,  the  husband 
making  no  defence,  so  that  within  a  week  Paula  was 
free,  and  Miss  Jameson  again  if  she  chose.  Nobody 
saw  her,  though  her  presence  in  town  must  have  been 
necessary,  and  nobody  knew  what  became  of  her  after 
wards.  The  newspapers,  indeed,  scenting  a  "story" 
which,  however  commonplace,  would  be  a  godsend  in 
the  hot  weather  and  the  dull  times,  would  have  made 
capital  out  of  it ;  and  from  what  we  knew  of  Mrs.  or 
Miss  Paula  she  would  have  been  ready  enough  to  oblige 
them.  But  either  she  was  greatly  changed,  or  Messrs. 
Marks,  Schindler  &  Marks,  in  their  wisdom,  interposed, 
for  no  "  interviews "  with  her  were  published.  It  is 
true  that  a  cut  came  out  in  the  Record-World,  represent 
ing  her  in  a  low-necked  dress  and  large  hat  (photograph 
by  Sarony  Studios)  labelled:  "Mrs.  Robert  Gilbert, 
nee  Jameson.  Mrs.  Gilbert  is  the  wife  of  Robert  D. 
Gilbert,  member  of  the  prominent  local  family,  and  at 
one  time  connected  with  this  paper.  Mrs.  Gilbert  is 
now  suing  for  divorce."  But  that  was  all ;  and  the  re 
porters  who  called  at  the  Gilbert  house  were  defeated 
by  the  very  courtesy  of  their  reception.  The  elder  Mrs. 
Gilbert  and  her  son  were  at  their  Vermont  sanatorium ; 
Miss  Gilbert  was  not  to  be  seen ;  and  I  believe  the  thin 
old  Professor  with  his  white  hair  and  his  simple  manners 

319 


320  VAN   CLEVE: 

of  a  generation  and  a  society  so  infinitely  removed 
from  their  own  as  to  be  quite  incomprehensible  to  them, 
completely  puzzled  and  baffled  these  brisk,  inventive 
youths.  They  could  make  nothing  out  of  him ;  he  was 
utterly  valueless  from  the  journalistic  standpoint,  as 
uninteresting  to  their  average  reader  as  the  Hebrew 
Testament  in  the  original ;  without  seeming  disagree 
ably  unwilling,  he  gave  the  impression  of  being  per 
fectly  unable  to  furnish  them  with  the  details  they 
sought ;  and  they  departed  empty  as  they  had  come  ! 
They  also  sought  out  an  intimate  friend  of  the  family, 
V.  C.  Kendrick,  who  was  as  affable  as  you  please ;  and 
after  he  had  answered  all  their  questions,  a  discerning 
person  might  have  observed  that  they  were  precisely  as 
wise  as  they  were  before,  and  no  wiser  !  Van  had  in 
deed  given  the  Gilbert  household  some  astute  counsel 
when  publicity  seemed  imminent.  "Now  don't  refuse 
to  see  the  fellows  from  the  papers,  or  have  them  shown 
out,  or  shut  the  door  in  their  faces,  or  anything  like 
that,"  he  warned  Lorrie  and  her  father ;  "it's  better  to 
see  them,  and  then  they'll  have  something  to  say,  no 
matter  what.  You  don't  need  to  tell  them  anything. 
They're  going  to  talk  anyhow,  you  know ;  they've  got 
to  fill  their  paper  up  with  something.  The  reporters 
make  their  living  by  it,  and  they  don't  mean  any  harm. 
I  say  you  don't  need  to  tell  them  anything.  Give  'em 
the  chance  to  put  in  a  lot  of  stuff  about '  a  petite  brunette 
with  sparkling  brown  eyes  and  a  winsome  grace  of 


manner  — ' ; 


'  A  petite '  ?  —  What,  do  you  mean  Lorrie  ?  "  said 
the  Professor,  recognizing  this  description  with  equal 
amazement  and  indignation;  "but  surely  it's  not 
necessary  for  Lorrie  to  submit  to  their  impertinences  ? 
She  doesn't  have  to  meet  them." 

"All  right,  you  see  them  then.  You'll  be  'a  dignified 
gentleman  of  the  old  school,  with  a  courtly  elegance  of 
phrase/"  said  Van  Cleve,  not  repressing  his  grin. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  321 

"What  difference  does  it  make?  They'll  have  some 
thing  to  say,  and  that's  all  they're  after.  Nobody  pays 
any  attention  to  them,  or  believes  one-tenth  of  what 
the  papers  say.  You  don't  yourself.  Don't  antagonize 
them,  that's  all." 

Professor  Gilbert  looked  at  the  younger  man,  un- 
feignedly  troubled.  His  every  instinct,  trained  and 
native,  rebelled  against  what  seemed  to  him  a  cheap, 
time-serving,  and  spiritless  piece  of  policy ;  yet  there 
was  something  convincing  about  Van  Cleve's  argument. 
"I'm  afraid  I'm  very  much  behind  the  times,"  he  said 
with  a  kind  of  good-humored  chagrin.  "Can  you 
make  any  other  suggestion,  Van?  For  instance, 
supposing  one  of  these  young  gentlemen  calls  on  me, 
ought  I  to  offer  him  entertainment ?  Cigars,  eh?" 

"You  might  if  you  chose.  But  just  give  him  one. 
If  you  give  him  any  more,  he'll  think  they're  aren't 
worth  anything,"  said  Van  Cleve,  entirely  serious.  It 
was  at  least  a  minute  before  he  could  make  out  why  the 
old  man  suddenly  broke  into  a  chuckle.  Hitherto, 
they  had  all  been  very  grave,  as  well  they  might  be, 
whenever  Bob's  difficulties  had  to  be  discussed.  None 
of  the  Gilberts,  though,  lacked  humor,  and  when  the 
Professor  actually  appeared  in  the  Tribune  inter 
view  as  "a  fine,  courtly  gentleman  of  the  old  school," 
etc.,  almost  exactly  as  Van  had  forecast,  Lorrie  and  her 
father  were  as  much  amused  as  their  friends. 

It  was  that  same  year,  but  in  the  autumn,  or  at  any 
rate,  some  time  after  Paula  got  her  decree,  for  every 
body  had  long  since  stopped  talking  about  that  incident 
-  had  completely  forgot  it,  no  doubt  —  that  the 
Xylotite  Hinge  Company  failed.  This  was  probably 
the  first  news  that  many  of  us  had  that  such  a  company 
existed  ;  and  although  it  has  since  been  resuscitated,  and 
they  say  is  in  a  fair  way  of  paying  out  after  years  of 
struggle,  a  large  section  of  the  community  is  still,  like 
myself,  in  perfect  ignorance  of  what  Xylotite  is,  and 


322  VAN   CLEVE: 

what  kind  of  hinges  are  made  of  it,  and  who  uses  them, 
and  why  the  manufacturers  should  have  failed.  Never 
theless,  I  have  been  assured  that  it  was  an  enterprise 
well  known  in  commercial  circles,  employing  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  capital,  and  of  a  spectacular  size  and 
growth.  It  went  down  with  a  crash  that  (to  be  meta 
phorical)  shook  the  foundations  of  more  than  one  other 
established  business ;  all  at  once  you  began  to  hear  of 
So-and-So  being  seriously  involved,  of  Such-a-One  mak 
ing  desperate  efforts  to  keep  above  water  —  "he  was  in 
terested  in  Xylotite,  you  know."  Presently  some  person 
or  persons  in  authority  instituted  a  "  PROBE  OF  XYLOTITE 
AFFAIRS,  "  as  the  newspapers  proclaimed.  "  Experts 
will  be  put  on  the  books  of  the  Xylotite  Concern"  was 
their  next  announcement ;  and  that  these  latter  found 
things  in  a  dangerous  muddle  might  be  guessed  from  the 
length  of  time,  some  six  or  eight  weeks,  which  their 
labors  took,  and  from  the  ominous  items  of  information 
that  at  intervals  found  their  way  to  the  press.  "The 
Xylotite  Company  did  a  business  over  a  large  territory, 
and  we  have  found  that  a  convenient  form  was  to  incor 
porate  several  companies,  which  was  also  used  as  a 
means  of  securing  additional  credit.  Among  these 
were :  The  Lawrenceburg  Machine  Tool  Company, 
Columbus  Weights  &  Pulleys,  Indurated  Rubber  of 
Akron,"  and  so  on  and  on.  That  was  only  one  (a  fair 
sample)  of  the  damaging  details  brought  to  light. 

Notwithstanding  the  sensational  disclosures,  how 
ever,  few  people  that  one  knew,  excepting  possibly  Van 
Kendrick  and  men  like  him  who  were  buried  heart  and 
soul  in  business,  cared  much  about  the  vicissitudes  of 
Xylotite ;  nobody  had  any  friends  or  relatives  ruined 
by  it ;  and  if  we  must  talk  about  financial  troubles, 
there  were  rumors  a  great  deal  more  interesting  and  also 
dismaying  in  circulation  which  never  seemed  to  get  as 
far  as  the  papers ;  they  went  the  rounds  of  the  private 
houses,  the  men  repeated  them  after  dinner  when  the 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  323 

coffee  and  liqueurs  came  in  and  the  smoking  began ; 
there  were  allusions,  headshakings,  careful  admissions, 
wise  or  satirical  comments.  It  was  all  about  the  Na 
tional  Loan  and  Savings  Bank,  Mr.  Gebhardt's  bank, 
that  bank  that  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  had  been  with  so 
long ;  it  began  at  the  Christmas  holidays,  and  went  on  all 
winter  in  its  curious  subterranean  way ;  without  quite 
understanding  it,  everybody  sincerely  hoped  that  "it 
wasn't  so."  Most  of  us  were  fond  of  the  Gebhardts, 
and  disliked  to  think  of  them  in  money  difficulties.  The 
women  of  the  family,  being  the  people  whom  it  touched 
the  nearest,  probably  never  heard  a  word  of  the  reports ; 
who  would  have  told  them?  They  could  not  even 
have  suspected  that  the  head  of  their  house  was  em 
barrassed  in  the  slightest  manner.  Mr.  Gebhardt  was 
devoted  to  his  family,  the  most  liberal  and  indulgent  of 
husbands  and  fathers,  a  giver  to  every  charity  you 
could  name,  a  man  who  was  constantly  and  unostenta 
tiously  doing  kindnesses  even  to  persons  who  had  no 
claim  on  him,  except  some  far-fetched  sentimental  one. 
He  kept  this  up  to  the  very  end ;  and  as  he  never 
brought  the  office  home  with  him  (so  he  had  often  been 
heard  to  say)  nor  shared  any  of  his  worries  with  his 
circle  of  women,  they  could  not  be  expected  to  know  any 
thing  about  his  affairs.  All  the  while  that  the  obscure 
hints  about  the  shakiness  of  the  National  Loan  were 
spreading  abroad,  the  Gebhardt  girls  danced,  and 
dressed,  and  entertained  as  expensively  as  ever ;  and  the 
youngest  of  the  four,  Annette,  who  would  be  out  next 
year,  was  getting  ready  to  go  to  Europe  for  six  months 
with  a  party  of  two  or  three  girls  from  her  Connecticut 
finishing-school,  when  - —  when  the  trouble  came.  Her 
father  went  on  to  Washington  the  beginning  of  January 
for  a  few  days,  and  Annette  was  very  much  put  out  at 
his  refusal  to  take  her  —  the  first  time  he  had  ever  re 
fused  her  anything  she  wanted  in  her  life.  She  might 
have  gone  to  the  New  Year's  reception  at  the  White 


324  VAN   CLEVE: 

House,  she  might  even  have  been  " behind  the  line," 
as  one  of  the  Cabinet  girls  was  a  school  chum  and  had 
visited  at  the  Gebhardt  summer  home  at  Watch  Hill. 
It  was  a  severe  disappointment  to  her,  and  to  her  mother, 
too.  Annette  Gebhardt  was  a  pretty  girl,  the  prettiest 
one  of  them  all ;  she  has  been  a  stenographer  in  the  city 
office  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  for  the  last  six  years, 
I  believe. 

Xylotite  had  been  forgotten  in  its  turn,  by  the  time 
the  National  Loan  and  Savings  explosion  occurred.  It 
was  Easter  Monday  when  we  took  up  our  morning  Trib 
une  and  read  in  the  middle  of  the  front  page  that  fol 
lowing  discoveries  made  by  Clearing-House  Examiner 
Walter  H.  Fisher  in  the  affairs  of  the  National  Loan  and 
Savings  Bank,  that  institution  had  been  ordered  closed. 
Mr.  Fisher  refused  to  talk  for  the  papers ;  but  it  was 
learned  from  other  sources  that  the  bank  was  not  ab 
solutely  insolvent ;  the  expectation  was  that  the  de 
positors  might  recover  in  the  neighborhood  of  forty 
cents  on  the  dollar  at  the  final  clean-up  unless  further 
investigation  revealed  a  worse  condition ;  the  share 
holders  would  be  completely  wiped  out.  Excessive  and 
bad  loans,  unprofitable  deposit  accounts,  and  bad 
management  were  to  blame  for  the  catastrophe,  which, 
while  not  unexpected,  owing  to  rumors  which  had  been 
afloat  for  some  time,  had  startled  the  financial  world  by 
its  magnitude  and  hopelessness.  It  was  intimated  that 
the  recent  collapse  of  the  Xylotite  Hinge  Company  had 
hastened  this  other  downfall.  Officials  of  the  bank 
(whose  names  were  given)  were  uniformly  reticent 
when  approached,  explaining  that  a  full  statement 
would  be  given  out  in  a  few  days ;  reporters  had  called 
at  the  magnificent  home  of  the  National's  president, 
Julius  Gebhardt,  on  Adams  Road,  the  North  Hill,  but 
were  denied  admittance. 

There  followed  a  condensed  biography  of  the  bank 
from  the  year  of  its  foundation  1875,  and  of  Mr.  Geb- 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  325 

hardt  himself,  the  facts  of  whose  career  were  plain  and 
simple  enough  and  might  have  been  gathered  from  a 
dozen  people,  as  he  had  lived  here  all  his  life.  His  and 
the  National  Loan's  troubles  began  with  the  ambitious 
alterations  and  enlargements  of  the  old  building  a  few 
years  ago,  the  newspaper  accounts  declared.  The 
marble  doorway  and  the  bronze  grille-work  of  the  stairs 
had  been  specially  designed  and  executed  by  a  New 
York  firm  at  a  cost,  it  was  said,  of  $75,000.  The  man 
agement  of  the  bank  had  undoubtedly  been  led  into 
this  and  other  extravagant  policies  during  the  flush 
times  immediately  preceding  the  disastrous  year  1896, 
which  inaugurated  a  period  of  depression  as  severe  as 
this  country  has  ever  felt,  etc.  And  the  report  con 
cluded  with  a  list  of  the  shareholders,  the  unfortunates 
who  were  going  to  be  wiped  out. 

That  was  all  for  that  one  day,  but  it  was  enough. 
Rarely  does  a  disturbance  on  "The  Street/7  even  of  so 
grave  a  character,  create  such  a  flurry  socially.  All  the 
women  were  talking  about  the  National  Loan  failure 
that  afternoon  at  their  card-parties  and  luncheons ; 
they  quoted  what  their  husbands  had  said  at  the  break 
fast-table  without  much  understanding,  but  with  looks 
of  awe ;  they  asked  one  another  anxiously  what  it  was 
best  to  do.  Would  you  telephone  to  Mrs.  Gebhardt  ? 
Or  call  at  the  house  and  —  and  leave  a  message  of 
sympathy,  you  know  ?  It  must  be  terrible  for  her  and 
the  girls.  Would  you  write  a  note  ?  Somebody  was 
going  to  send  flowers,  but  it  was  objected,  not  unreason 
ably,  that  that  would  look  too  much  like  a  funeral.  It 
wouldn't  be  tactful  to  be  too  sympathetic.  If  you 
showed  too  great  an  interest,  it  was  liable  to  be  taken 
for  curiosity ;  but  if  you  didn't  show  some,  you  would 
seem  perfectly  horrid  and  callous.  The  difficulty  lay 
in  steering  the  middle  course.  "It  doesn't  happen 
often  enough  for  one  to  know  what  would  be  strictly 
proper,"  one  worried  lady  was  overheard  to  sigh;  "if 


326  VAN   CLEVE: 

I  had  always  been  very  intimate  with  Mrs.  Gebhardt, 
of  course  I'd  go  right  to  her.  But  I  feel  I  can't  intrude 
that  way,  though  we've  known  each  other  for  years, 
and  I've  been  entertained  at  her  house  hundreds  of 
times,  and  she's  on  the  Incurables'  Board,  and  the 
Widows'  Home,  and  the  Flower  Mission  with  me.  It's 
dreadful.  If  it  had  just  been  a  death  in  the  family  —  ! 
We're  all  used  to  that!" 

Within  two  or  three  days,  the  promised  statement 
came  out,  a  whole  column  of  it,  headed  by :  "  PROBE  OF 
NATIONAL  LOAN  AND  SAVINGS  CONTINUED.  SENSA 
TIONAL  DISCLOSURES.  KENDRICK  GETS  PANNED,"  —a 
manner  of  calling  attention  to  it  which  fully  succeeded, 
thereby  indicating  (I  suppose)  that  in  the  journalistic 
view,  the  end  justifies  the  means.  For,  when  the  friends 
of  the  bank  and  of  the  official  named,  after  reading  the 
above  with  surprise  and  concern,  went  on  to  the  report 
itself,  they  found,  as  occasionally  happens  in  our  news 
paper  practice,  that  the  headlines  had  only  the  most 
remote  and  exiguous  connection  with  the  actual  facts  ! 
For  one  thing,  the  new  disclosures  could  scarcely  be  called 
sensational,  inasmuch  as  everybody  had  been  expecting 
them,  and  they  were  in  a  sense  an  amplification  of  what 
was  already  known.  Mr.  Fisher  with  his  clerical  staff, 
aided  by  the  head-bookeeper  of  the  National,  V.  C. 
Kendrick,  and  the  assistant  bookkeeper,  R.  Meyer,  had 
worked  till  a  late  hour  every  night  last  week,  leaving 
themselves  the  shortest  possible  intervals  of  rest ;  the 
Examiner's  job  was  monumental,  according  to  the  report; 
he  had  reviewed  practically  every  one  of  the  bank's 
accounts,  classifying  them  for  the  convenience  of  the 
Clearing-house  Association  in  three  divisions,  "good." 
"doubtful,"  and  "worthless";  they  had  the  papers 
in  bushel-baskets ;  and  when  they  got  through  (said 
the  Tribune),  "The  condition  of  the  room  bore  testi 
mony  to  the  financial  whirlwind  which  had  swept  it." 
.  .  .  "  Certain  collaterals  behind  loans  to  the  Xylotite 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND   HIS  FAMILY  327 

Company  were  absent,  it  is  charged,  from  the  notes 
where  they  should  be  pinned  in  good  banking  practice." 
.  .  .  "It  is  said  that  the  average  cost  of  the  special, 
bank,  and  savings  deposit  accounts  stood  the  National 
Loan  between  2.75  and  3  per  cent.  Other  banks  insist 
that  there  is  no  money  in  these  deposits  at  this  rate, 
and  that  the  only  benefit  they  are  to  a  bank  is  to  make  a 
'flash'  with  big  deposit  accounts."  After  receiving 
the  report,  the  Association,  consisting  of  representatives 
from  all  the  clearing-house  banks  in  the  city,  Messrs. 
Geo.  Douglas,  Edward  B.  Hooper,  Morris  Kuhn,  etc. 
(the  Tribune  gave  all  the  names),  in  a  session  that 
lasted  four  hours,  the  president  and  three  directors  of 
the  National  being  present,  finally  reached  the  decision 
that  an  adjustment  of  the  National  Loan's  affairs  to 
enable  it  to  continue  business  was  impracticable.  "It 
was  a  dramatic  scene"  -to  quote  the  paper  again - 
"when  Julius  Gebhardt,  president  of  the  defunct  or 
ganization  for  the  last  fifteen  years,  and  connected  with  it 
throughout  his  business  career,  took  his  dismissal  from 
the  ranks  of  bankers.  Mr.  Gebhardt,  who  seemed  to 
be  much  affected,  rose  and  said  that  he  wished  to  thank 
the  Association  ;  that  if  they  had  seen  their  way  to  back 
ing  his  bank  up  in  its  troubles,  his  gratitude  would  have 
been  boundless :  but  that  he  realized  they  were  using 
their  best  judgment,  and  he  was  willing  to  abide  by  it. 
After  his  little  speech,  the  meeting  dissolved.  It  is 
understood  that  the  next  move  will  probably  be  made 
by  the  shareholders,  to  call  a  meeting  and  decide  what 
action,  if  any,  shall  be  taken.  Rumors  of  a  Federal 
suit  involving  Gebhardt  and  others  were  rife  on  the 
street  to-day,  but  could  not  be  confirmed." 

As  to  that  "KENDRICK  GETS  PANNED,"  which  had 
given  persons  who  knew  him  such  a  shock,  interviews 
with  Mr.  Fisher  and  one  or  two  other  authorities  re 
vealed  that  no  such  formidable  process  as  "panning  " 
would  describe  had  taken  place  nor  anything  resembling 


328  VAN   CLEVE: 

it.  It  was  now  made  known  that  the  Examiner,  on  his 
regular  inspection,  six  months  before,  had  sent  a  report 
to  the  Association  that  conditions  at  the  National  Loan 
were  decidedly  unsatisfactory.  Later  Mr.  Gebhardt  had 
made  a  trip  to  Washington  to  see  the  Comptroller  of  the 
Currency,  and  had  received  the  ultimatum  to  "  clean  up 
or  be  cleaned  up. "  Notwithstanding  the  warning,  noth 
ing  looking  towards  any  kind  of  straightening  out  was 
done  at  the  National  in  spite  of  the  personal  efforts  of 
Mr.  Kendrick  who,  as  it  now  appeared,  since  he  be 
came  aware  of  the  exact  state  of  affairs,  had  made 
repeated  and  vigorous  protests  to  the  head  of  the  organ 
ization.  Finally,  on  the  27th  of  March,  in  the  course 
of  a  stormy  conversation  with  the  president,  Kendrick 
had  declared  his  intention  of  writing  to  the  Examiner, 
and  acquainting  him  exactly  how  matters  stood.  A 
young  woman  stenographer  who  had  been  within  hear 
ing  of  the  controversy,  which  went  on  behind  closed 
doors  in  the  president's  own  room,  reported  that  Ken 
drick  had  raised  his  voice  and  got  very  angry  and  pro 
fane  ;  she  had  heard  him  say  that  he  was  no  d — d 
dummy  like  the  rest  of  them  to  sit  still  and  do  what  he 

was  told  ;  that,  by ,  he  had  smelled  something  rotten 

the  first  day  he  sat  with  the  directors  and  found  that 
the  loans  weren't  read.  He  had  also  said  that  American 
Bung  Company  was  only  another  infernal  swindling 
alias  for  Xylotite ;  he  wouldn't  stand  for  it  —  you 
couldn't  play  horse  with  him  —  and  a  great  deal  more 
in  the  same  style.  Miss  Nevins  had  not  overheard  any 
of  Mr.  Gebhardt's  replies  to  all  this ;  he  had  evidently 
been  much  more  moderate;  everybody  in  the  bank, 
she  said,  liked  Mr.  Gebhardt,  who  was  "just  lovely" 
to  all  of  them,  and  had  been  in  particular  so  good  to 
Mr.  Kendrick,  she  didn't  see  how  he  could  talk  to  Mr. 
Gebhardt  that  way. 

Sitting  in  the  street-car  that  morning  there  were 
next  to  me  two  men  who  were  discussing  the  National 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  329 

Loan  all  the  way  down  town;  it  was  curious  and  in 
structive  to  hear  them  say  (for  I  listened  unblushingly) 
that  they  never  had  trusted  Gebhardt,  that  they  always 
had  suspected  he  was  crooked  —  "  or  plain  fool ;  it's 
pretty  near  as  bad  when  it  comes  to  letting  him  handle 
other  people's  money,"  one  of  them  said.  After  Mr. 
Gebhardt's  fall,  everybody  simultaneously  found  out 
that  they  had  never  trusted  him,  or  that  they  had  always 
had  a  poor  opinion  of  his  business  sense!  " There's 
one  honest  man  in  the  mix-up,  anyhow,  this  Kendrick, 
the  fellow  that  put  the  Examiner  wise  to  what  was  go 
ing  on.  Wrote  to  him,  it  says,"  said  this  gentleman,  as 
he  folded  up  the  paper. 

The  other,  who  was  chewing  a  toothpick,  looked 
sceptical.  "  Fisher  would  have  been  round  and  found 
out  for  himself  in  two  or  three  weeks,  anyhow,"  he 
said  ;  "looks  to  me  like  Kendrick  was  trying  to  get  from 
under.  Looks  to  me  like  it  was  a  case  of  thieves  falling 
out,  more  than  anything  else.  You  see  Kendrick  had 
that  rumpus  with  Gebhardt,  after  they'd  been  as  thick 
as  could  be  for  years.  A  man  can't  stay  ten  years  in  a 
bank  and  be  as  close  as  he  was  to  the  top  without  know 
ing  more  about  it  than  Kendrick  claims  to  have.  And 
a  man  don't  get  that  mad  about  somebody  else's  money 
being  risked.  If  it  was  his  own--  !" 

"Your  idea  is  it  was  just  spite  work,  then ?" 

"Sure.  They  had  a  quarrel,  and  Kendrick  did  it 
partly  to  get  even.  Why,  look  here,  in  that  interview 
they  got  out  of  him,  he  admits  that  he'd  borrowed 
money  of  Gebhardt.  My  guess  is  that  Gebhardt 
wouldn't  lend  him  any  more,  or  refused  to  let  him  in  on 
some  deal,  so  he  gets  sore  and  makes  up  his  mind  to  put 
Gebhardt  out  of  business." 

"I  didn't  see  that  about  the  borrowing.  Is  that  in 
the  paper?  " 

"Yes  —  inside  page.  It  seems  they  went  through 
Gebhardt's  private  desk  and  papers  along  with  the 


330  VAN   CLEVE: 

rest  —  Fisher  turned  everything  inside  out,  you  know 
- 1  expect  the  whole  of  that  Xylotite  loan  business 
hasn't  come  out  yet.  Anyhow,  first  thing  you  know 
they  found  some  kind  of  begging  letter  from  Kendrick' s 
sister  or  mother  or  somebody  representing  that  the 
family  —  they  live  away  from  here  somewhere  —  were 
in  some  kind  of  fix  and  needed  some  money  to  help  'em 
out.  And  then  there  were  some  more  letters  acknowl 
edging  a  loan,  and  thanking  him  for  it  and  so  forth  - 
five  hundred  dollars,  I  think  it  was.  Of  course  that's 
a  small  sum,  but  that  just  shows  you  how  close  Kendrick 
was  to  Gebhardt ;  and  besides  you  don't  know  how 
many  times  they  may  have  done  that,  how  much 
they  may  have  got  out  of  him  in  dribs,  till  Gebhardt 
got  tired  of  it.  Of  course  Kendrick  himself  don't  ask 
for  the  money  —  oh  no  !  All  he  does  is  to  get  behind 
the  women  and  let  them  ask  for  it.  He's  been  making 
a  good  salary  right  along  ;  his  family  didn't  need  to  ask 
Gebhardt  or  anybody  else  for  money,  unless  he  told 
'em  to.  You'd  probably  find  that  every  cent  they've 
borrowed  has  gone  to  some  bucket-shop ;  that's  the 
way  men  get  away  with  it,  in  just  those  little  dabs. 
Anybody  that  wants  money  for  any  legitimate  enter 
prise  goes  out  and  borrows  it  openly,  you  know  that. 
No,  sir!"  he  spoke  with  righteous  warmth,  chewing 
vigorously  on  the  toothpick;  "when  I  read  that,  it 
settled  my  opinion  of  Kendrick." 

"It  don't  look  very  good,"  the  other  man  admitted; 
"what  did  Kendrick  say  when  the  reporters  got  on  to 
this  letter  business,  and  asked  him  ?" 

"Didn't  say  anything,  just  acknowledged  it.  He 
couldn't  very  well  help  himself,  you  know.  Made 
some  bluff  about  that  being  a  private  matter  between 
himself  and  Gebhardt  —  some  big  talk  like  that.  It's 
all  in  the  paper  —  you  read  it  yourself,  and  see  what  you 
think." 

"Well,  I  wouldn't  want  to  condemn  anybody  whole- 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  331 

sale.  After  all,  Kendrick  had  the  choice  of  letting  things 
go  on  as  they  were  at  the  bank  and  piling  up  bigger 
losses  for  everybody  concerned,  or  of  blowing  it  up  at 
once  and  himself  along  with  it  - 

"  That's  what  he  did,  and  took  a  chance  on  getting 
out." 

"That  makes  him  either  a  mighty  honest  man  or  a 
mighty  desperate  one/'  said  the  other  with  a  laugh ; 
"oh,  well,  give  him  the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  anyway." 

These  two  probably  represented  fairly  the  varying 
opinion  of  the  public,  amongst  whom  there  would  be 
some  on  Van's  side,  or,  at  least,  on  the  side  of  moderation 
and  impartiality ;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  many  more  as 
critically  biassed  as  the  man  with  the  toothpick.  Van 
Cleve  knew  it ;  he  knew  his  world.  He  felt  no  disposi 
tion  to  w^aste  time  attempting  explanations,  or  de 
manding  justice  from  the  community  at  large.  "In 
the  long  run  it  doesn't  make  any  difference  how  much 
you've  been  wronged,  or  how  well  you  talk,  or  what  proofs 
you've  got ;  all  that  people  know  is  that  you're  letting 
out  an  awful  yelp  about  something,  and  they  wish 
you'd  quit!"  he  said  sourly;  "anybody  that  doesn't 
trust  me,  can  look  up  my  record.  I'm  not  going  around 
showing  it  to  people,  but  I  haven't  got  anything  to  be 
afraid  of  or  ashamed  of.  Everybody  will  forget  all 
about  it  directly,  anyhow ;  ten  years  from  now,  they'll 
only  remember  that  the  National  Loan  and  Savings 
Bank  went  to  pieces,  and  that  V.  C.  Kendrick  was 
somehow  connected  with  it."  A  prophecy  which  has 
literally  come  true  ! 

The  morning  after  the  final  report  appeared  he  went 
down  to  the  bank  for  the  last  time,  to  clean  out  his  desk  ; 
Meyer  was  to  be  there,  too,  and  they  were  expecting  Mr. 
Gebhardt.  It  happened  to  be  market-day,  and  there 
was  a  keen  smell  of  fresh  meats  and  vegetables  on  the 
air ;  the  stands  and  carts  were  ranked  all  along  the 
curb,  with  among  them  many  of  those  humble  clients 


332  VAN   CLEVE: 

of  the  National  Loan  whom  Van  Cleve  had  grown  to 
know  so  well.  For  all  his  hardness,  he  would  have  given 
something  not  to  have  to  meet  their  honest,  worried 
faces,  their  eyes  that  followed  him  with  so  unnatural 
and  painful  an  interest.  He  had  not  despoiled  them  ; 
he  had  tried  to  save  them ;  his  hands  were  clean  ;  and 
he  was  surprised  at  the  suddenness  and  strength  of  his 
desire  to  have  them  know  it.  Let  who  will  suspect  him 
of  being  a  scoundrel  or  a  weakling,  but  not  these  !  Not 
these  poor  hard-working  men  and  women  !  The  old 
German  wife  he  knew  the  best  came  up  to  him,  with  her 
scared,  trembling  old  face.  "Mr.  Kentrick,  Mr.  Ken- 
trick,  meine  Hilda  she  say  der  bank  iss  go  bust  mit  all 
der  mazuma!"  She  sobbed  the  grotesque  words, 
clutching  at  the  sleeve  of  his  coat  with  toil-cramped 
fingers,  a  figure  of  Tragedy  among  the  pots  of  hyacinths 
and  Easter-blooming  lilies,  the  onions  and  carrots  and 
crocks  of  cottage-cheese.  All  the  other  old  women,  and 
the  lank  younger  ones  with  their  shawled  or  sunbon- 
neted  heads,  the  stoop-shouldered  men  and  the  chil 
dren,  who  were  bobbing  about  everywhere  underfoot, 
crowded  up,  hanging  on  his  words.  Not  all  of  them  had 
lost  by  the  bank's  failure ;  on  some  of  the  faces  there 
was  no  feeling  stronger  than  curiosity,  or  a  sordid  ex 
citement.  "Iss  it  true,  Mr.  Kentrick?  It  aindt  true, 
aindt  it  ?"  clamored  the  old  woman. 

"Pretty  near  true,  Mrs.  Habekotte,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
grimly.  "You'll  get  a  little  something  back." 

She  dropped  her  hands  with  a  wail ;  some  of  the  other 
women  set  up  a  sympathetic  lamentation.  "Poor 
soul,  ain't  it  awful !  How  much  did  she  have  in  ?  "  one 
of  them  questioned  Van  Cleve.  Just  as  he  was  extri 
cating  himself,  Mrs.  Habekotte  broke  through  her  circle 
of  condolence,  and  ran  after  him,  "Mr.  Kentrick,  your 
own  money  mit  der  bank  got  away  also  yet  ?  " 

"That's  right.     I'm  about  cleaned  out." 

She  contemplated  him  mournfully,  with  a  kind  of 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  333 

resigned  and  unenvious  comparison  of  their  lots.  ' '  Veil, 
you  are  young,  already  !  Aber,  when  one  is  old  —  !" 
she  sighed,  and  plodded  back  to  her  stall,  drooping,  fol 
lowed  by  her  clan  of  neighbors.  Van  Cleve  heard 
some  of  them  volubly  reporting  the  fact  that  he  too  was 
" busted/'  something  which  appeared  to  establish  his 
honesty  to  their  minds. 

Meyer  was  waiting  for  him  on  the  steps  of  the  bank, 
and  they  went  in  behind  the  familiar  bronze  gratings  that 
had  proved  to  be  so  disastrously  costly,  and  went  to 
work,  but  after  a  while  found  themselves  " stalled/'  as 
Meyer  said,  by  the  non-arrival  of  their  ex-president ;  he 
was  to  have  been  there  at  half-past  ten,  and  was,  in 
general,  the  most  punctual  of  men.  The  minutes  wore 
on,  and  still  they  lounged.  Meyer  had  one  cigar,  a 
long,  thin  stogie  of  unimaginable  flavor,  which  he  cut  in 
two ;  and  they  smoked  it,  commenting  on  the  strange 
ness  of  smoking  there  in  the  bank,  the  strangeness  of  the 
silence  and  emptiness  at  what  had  been  wont  to  be  the 
busiest  and  most  crowded  hour  of  the  day.  At  last, 
as  it  was  striking  eleven,  Van  Cleve  went  up  stairs  to  the 
real-estate  office  on  the  third  floor  to  telephone,  the 
bank's  instrument  having  been  disconnected.  There 
was  some  trouble.  "I  don't  believe  I  can  get  you  that 
number,  party,  they  don't  answer,"  the  telephone- 
exchange  girl  had  just  announced,  when  an  agitated 
voice  at  the  other  end  of  the  line  broke  in:  "Well, 
what  is  it  ?  Do  stop  ringing  !  What  is  it  ?  Who  are 
you  and  what  do  you  want  ?  " 

"Tell  Mr.  Gebhardt  it's  Kendrick,  please;  we're 
waiting  for  him  at  the  bank." 

' '  Kendrick  ?     Wait  a  minute  ! " 

Van  Cleve,  standing  with  the  telephone  at  his  ear,  was 
aware  of  a  wild  flurry  of  talk,  sobbing,  ejaculations,  going 
on  somewhere  near  the  other  end.  Then  some  one  be 
gan  again ;  it  was  a  minute  before  he  could  recognize 
Mrs.  Gebhardt's  voice.  "Mr.  Kendrick,  is  it  you? 


334  VAN   CLEVE: 

Oh,  won't  you  please  go  right  away  down  to  the  — 
where  did  they  say  he  had  to  go,  Natalie  ?  —  to  the 
Courthouse  —  no,  no,  it's  the  Government  Building  — 
he's  there  —  they  wouldn't  let  me  go  with  him  —  oh, 
I'm  so  afraid  —  never  mind,  Natalie,  I'll  tell  Mr.  Ken- 
drick.  He's  with  the  Marshal  —  in  the  Marshal's 
office,  I  think  they  said.  They  wouldn't  let  me  go 
with  him,  and  I'm  so  afraid  —  he  hasn't  been  well,  you 
know,  since  this  terrible  trouble  came.  Will  you  go 
down  there,  Mr.  Kendrick?" 

Van  Cleve  said  that  he  would  be  glad  to  be  of  any 
use.  And  indeed  he  was ;  for  he  ran  out  and  caught  the 
next  car  and  got  down  to  the  Government  Building  just 
as  poor  Julius  Gebhardt,  accompanied  by  the  Marshal 
and  the  Chief  Deputy  and  his  lawyer,  and  watched  from 
afar  by  a  little  swarm  of  newspaper-men,  was  going 
into  United  States'  Commissioner  Dixon's  room  for  a 
preliminary  hearing ;  he  was  under  arrest,  charged  with 
having  abstracted  and  wilfully  misappropriated  certain 
of  the  moneys,  funds,  and  credits  of  the  National  Loan 
and  Savings  Bank  to  the  amount  of  twenty-eight  thou 
sand  dollars  ($28,000);  "the  said  Julius  Gebhardt 
was  then  and  there  the  duly  elected  and  acting  presi 
dent  of  said  banking  association,  and  he  did  then  and 
there  unlawfully  and  wilfully  convert  same  to  his  own 
use  with  intent  to  injure  and  defraud  the  said  National 
Banking  Association  and  the  shareholders  thereof." 
Van  Cleve  reached  there  just  in  time  to  go  out  and  hunt 
up  the  bondsmen  for  him. 


CHAPTER   V 
BUSINESS  WOMEN 

AFTER  a  year  or  so  of  Nova  Scotia,  the  Van  Cleve 
family  moved  to  Salem,  Massachusetts,  as  we  heard 
through  Miss  Gilbert,  who  was  always  more  likely  to 
know  something  of  them  and  their  whereabouts  than 
any  one  else.  But  since  that  time  we  have  rather  lost 
sight  of  Van  Cleve's  people  ;  they  have  never  come  back 
here,  and  their  various  flights  and  settlings  have  been 
too  distant  and  uncertain  to  be  easily  followed.  The  last 
news  was  they  were  in  Pasadena,  and  Evelyn  was  en 
gaged  to  a  Mr.  Heffelbauer,  aa  son  of  the  millionnaire 
prune-man,"  as  some  one  told  me ;  it  may  be  true, 
for  in  American  Backgrounds,  the  magazine  of  house 
decoration  I  came  across  quite  by  accident  the  other 
day,  a  half-tone  of  a  charming  garden  in  the  Italian 
style,  pools,  marble  benches,  dark,  pointed  fir  trees  and 
all  the  rest  of  it,  labelled:  " Formal  garden  at  Idlewild, 
the  estate  of  W.  D.  Heffelbauer,  San  Jose,  Calif.  Prune 
orchard  in  the  distance.  Photograph  from  a  painting 
by  Miss  E.  Lucas."  So,  I  say,  there  may  be  something 
in  that  rumor. 

And  I  will  confess  it  has  occurred  to  me  once  or  twice 
to  wonder  whether  a  millionnaire  in  the  family  might 
not  help  Van  Cleve  out  a  little,  and  to  hope  that  the 
prospective  Mrs.  Heffelbauer 's  papa-in-law  will  be  lib 
eral  with  his  prune-money.  To  be  sure,  Van  doesn't  need 
help  much  nowadays  ;  they  say  he  makes  a  great  deal 
more  than  a  comfortable  living  out  of  the  real-estate 
business  he  went  into  after  the  National  Loan  fail- 

335 


336  VAN   CLEVE: 

ure.  He  borrowed  money  for  the  venture,  and  opened 
an  office  over  the  Central  Building  and  Loan  Associa 
tion,  with  which  organization  he  had  been  connected  a 
long  while.  Its  members  stood  by  him  staunchly,  in 
spite  of  the  ugly  gossip  going  about ;  the  small  clients 
whom  he  had  gathered  during  his  term  at  the  bank  stuck 
to  him,  and  he  gradually  gained  others ;  nevertheless, 
he  must  have  had  a  gloomy  time  of  it  for  the  first  few 
years.  Heavens,  how  he  worked  !  What  nights  he 
spent  awake,  what  days  of  effort  and  anxiety  !  Out 
wardly,  he  gave  no  sign  of  it ;  he  had  the  temperament 
for  such  a  struggle,  and  in  a  sense  it  agreed  with  him. 
I  have  heard  him  say  with  a  laugh  that  in  the  worst  of 
his  pinches,  he  never  worried  half  so  much  over  holding 
any  job,  or  making  both  ends  meet,  as  he  did  the  very 
first  time  he  went  to  work,  a  lad  of  eighteen,  at  the  shoe 
factory  in  St.  Louis,  and  used  to  go  up,  trembling,  for 
his  pay  envelope  every  Saturday  night,  in  deadly  fear 
of  hearing  that  he  was  to  be  "laid  off."  "I  got  the  place 
during  a  rush  season  they  were  having,  with  the  under 
standing  that  if  competent  and  satisfactory  I  was  to  be 
taken  on  regularly,"  he  explained;  '" competent  and 
satisfactory  ! '  My  job  was  sticking  black  silk  labels 
with  the  firm's  name  on  'em  in  gilt  letters  in  the  insides 
of  the  shoes,  and  I  wasn't  so  green  but  that  I  knew  they 
could  get  fifty  boys  to  do  that  whenever  they  needed 
them  —  that's  what  was  on  my  mind.  And  I  thought 
the  family  were  headed  straight  for  the  poorhouse  if  it 
wasn't  for  me  and  my  eight  dollars  a  week!"  He 
laughed  again,  but  to  a  discerning  listener,  the  story 
was  not  all  funny;  and  where  would  his  family  have 
been  by  now  but  for  Van  Cleve,  one  could  not  help  ques 
tioning. 

No,  hard  work,  debts  and  expenses,  narrow  profits, 
harrowing  uncertainties,  none  of  these  were  a  trial  to 
Van  Cleve ;  he  had  lived  too  much  of  his  life  under 
those  same  conditions,  and  would  scarcely  have  known 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  337 

what  to  do  with  himself  in  untrammelled  leisure.  But 
what  did  gall  him  was  the  knowledge  that  to  very  many 
people,  good  honest  people,  however  small-minded  and 
unfair  they  might  be,  he  would  always  be  an  unscrupu 
lous  and  untrustworthy  man.  A  scoundrel  who  kept 
his  scoundrelism  just  inside  the  limits  of  the  law ;  a 
rat  who  left  a  sinking  ship  ;  a  fellow  who  had  been  ready 
to  profit  by  some  shady  transaction  with  the  National 
Loan  funds,  but  was  smart  enough  to  get  out  in  time, 
and  leave  Gebhardt  with  the  bag  to  hold,  —  that  was 
their  judgment,  and  as  I  have  said,  Van  Cleve  knew  it. 
It  was  true  that  a  thorough  inquiry  into  the  bank's 
affairs  had  brought  out  nothing  discreditable  to  him ; 
the  very  man  who  talked  most  knowingly  about  Ken- 
drick's  sharp  practices  could  not  describe  one  of  them, 
knew  not  a  soul  whom  Kendrick  had  injured,  nor  had 
been  injured  himself  to  the  value  of  a  penny.  But  the 
intangibility  of  the  suspicions  made  them  harder  to 
disprove ;  and  even  to-day,  after  all  this  time,  and 
though  Van's  whole  life,  before  and  since,  has  been  in 
direct  contradiction,  there  still  remain  people  who  will 
answer  any  statement  about  Van  Cleve  Kendrick  by 
remarking  sagely:  "Oh,  yes,  he's  that  fellow  who 
nearly  got  caught  with  Julius  Gebhardt,  in  the  National 
Loan  smash-up.  Got  hold  of  a  lot  of  money  by  mak 
ing  his  mother  borrow  it  on  some  pretext  or  other,  and 
lost  it  all.  Tell  you  if  I'd  been  District  Attorney,  I'd 
have  got  him.  There's  too  much  quibbling  about 
technicalities,  and  not  enough  common-sense  justice 
in  our  law  practice  nowadays." 

It  seemed  strange  to  Van  Cleve  afterwards,  when  the 
irretrievable  had  happened,  that  he  had  never  suspected, 
scarcely  even  troubled  himself  to  ask,  at  the  time  of  the 
family's  removal  from  Pass  Christian  to  Halifax,  whence 
had  come  the  money  for  the  journey,  which  he  himself 
had  refused  to  supply  them.  He  understood  that  Eve 
lyn  had  sold  some  pictures  ;  well  and  good  !  He  had 


338  VAN   CLEVE: 

received  the  news  with  a  surprise  not  entirely  compli 
mentary  to  the  artist ;  but  had  made  no  further  in 
quiry.  It  was  not  until  a  year  and  a  half  later,  in  the 
summer  of  1901,  that  he  found  out  the  truth.  Nineteen 
hundred  and  one  turned  out  a  fateful  year  for  Van; 
Mr.  O'Rourke  gave  up  his  place  among  the  bank  direc 
tors  at  last,  having  indeed  been  called  to  another  some 
six  feet  underground  in  Spring  Grove  Cemetery,  so 
that  the  poor  old  man  never  knew  the  disgrace  that  was 
to  come  upon  their  management  or  mismanagement; 
and  Mr.  Kendrick,  who  was  even  at  that  time  cloudily 
dissatisfied  and  uneasy  over  the  conduct  of  affairs,  took 
his  seat.  The  hot  weather  came  on;  Van  Cleve  took 
Mrs.  Gilbert  and  Bob  on  east  to  the  Vermont  sana 
torium,  and  himself  extended  the  trip  to  visit  his  family, 
who  were  by  this  time  getting  ready  for  the  Salem 
move. 

It  had  been  almost  three  years,  but  Van  found  them 
not  much  changed.  His  grandmother  looked  a  good 
deal  older,  and  clung  to  him  rather  pathetically;  his 
aunt  and  cousin  were  as  slender,  brilliant,  and  em 
phatic  as  ever;  Major  Stanton  had  a  new  story,  a 
tensely  dramatic  one,  beginning:  "When  I  was  with 
Sherman  on  his  famous  march  to  the  sea,  of  which  you 
may  have  heard  —  "and  reciting  how  he  had  "  taken  a 
detail"  on  a  scouting  expedition,  and  found  a  dozen 
people  starved  to  death  in  a  negro-cabin  where  they  had 
taken  refuge,  the  women  in  ball-dresses  with  jewels  on 
their  necks,  and  on  every  face  a  set  smile  ghastly  to 
behold !  The  Major  didn't  invent  this  grisly  tale, 
either,  though  his  telling  of  it  could  hardly  be  surpassed. 
You  may  find  it  in  Napier's  "  History  of  the  Peninsular 
War  "  any  day  you  choose  to  look.  Van  Cleve  listened  to 
it  with  due  appreciation  ;  he  recalled  his  boyish  agonies 
of  shame  and  fear  of  ridicule  with  amusement  nowadays. 
Uncle  Stan  was  harmless  ;  everybody  saw  through  him, 
he  reflected  with  a  kind  of  laughing  affection. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  339 

As  for  the  rest  of  the  family,  they  were  sincerely  de 
lighted  to  see  him ;  all  the  women  hung  on  him  with 
caresses ;  they  had  his  favorite  dishes  on  the  table ; 
upset  the  whole  house  to  suit  what  they  fancied  to  be 
his  convenience  or  his  whim ;  ' '  entertained  "  him  by  the 
hour ;  showed  him  off  before  their  friends,  and  enemies, 
too  —  they  had  an  entire  new  set  of  both  about  whom 
they  were  as  hotly  enthusiastic  in  praise  and  blame  as 
had  always  been  their  habit.  Though  they  had  gone  off 
and  left  him  without  scruple,  though  they  had  had  more 
than  one  disagreement  with  him,  and  had  often  com 
plained  to  one  another  of  his  harshness  and  obstinacy, 
about  the  impossibility  of  reasoning  with  him,  and  his 
brutal  way  of  "saying  things/'  they  were  nevertheless 
very  fond  and  proud  of  Van  Cleve.  No  outsider  would 
have  dared  to  criticise  him  in  their  presence  as  severely 
as  they  did  themselves ;  they  were  loyal  to  the  core ; 
and,  even  if  Van  had  been  as  arrant  a  blackguard  as  ever 
walked,  would  have  loved  and  shielded  him.  They  had 
long  ago  forgiven  the  Pass  Christian  grievance,  being 
always  generous-spirited  and  ready  to  let  bygones  be 
bygones.  And,  besides,  the  impracticability  of  Halifax 
as  a  place  of  further  residence,  and  the  extreme  de 
sirableness  of  Salem  now  occupied  them  fully.  Van 
Cleve  heard  them  leniently,  for  once. 

"It  might  not  be  a  bad  plan,"  he  said;  "this  place 
seems  to  be  all  right,  but  I'd  be  better  satisfied  if  you 
were  a  little  nearer  me,  so  I  could  reach  you  quickly  in 
case  some  trouble  came  up.  It  takes  too  long  on  the 
road  coming  here." 

"Oh,  Van,  you  have  so  much  judgment!"  said  his 
aunt,  devoutly ;  "I  knew  if  we  could  get  that  splendid 
clear  head  of  yours  to  work,  you  would  get  right  to  the 
bottom  of  —  of  everything  at  once.  Our  only  problem 
is  getting  to  Salem.  You  know  how  we  hate  to  ask 
you  for  another  cent  after  all  you're  constantly  doing." 
Tears  came  into  her  eyes,  as  she  gazed  at  him ;  it  was 


340  VAN   CLEVE: 

quite  true ;  they  did  hate  to  ask  him  for  money  —  or 
thought  they  did. 

" That's  all  right/'  said  Van,  briefly;  "it's  possible 
that  I  can't  give  you  all  you  need,  but  you  might  begin 
and  save  a  little  —  don't  stint  yourselves,  just  save 
what  you  can,  you  know  —  every  month  from  now  until 
your  lease  here  runs  out.  Then  with  that,  and  what  I 
can  spare,  you  may  be  able  to  make  out.  Sold  any 
thing  lately,  Evelyn?" 

"Oh,  this  isn't  any  place  for  pictures,  Van,"  the 
artist  explained  with  energy.  "That's  one  very  strong 
reason  for  our  getting  away.  I  really  don't  think  we 
ought  to  stay  any  longer  than  we  can  possibly  help ; 
we  can  get  somebody  to  take  over  the  lease,  you  know, 
so  we  won't  lose  anything  that  way.  It's  business,  you 
know,  with  me,  Van.  I'm  simply  buried  here." 

"What's  the  matter?  Aren't  the  people  here  up  in 
art,  and  all  that  ?  Can't  you  get  them  interested  ?  I 
thought  it  could  hardly  be  a  worse  place  than  Pass 
Christian,  and  you  did  pretty  well  there." 

Evelyn  and  her  mother  began  together  :  "Oh,  mercy, 
don't  talk  about  Pass  Christian !  It  was  horrid. 
There  was  nobody  there  but  a  great  drove  of  common 
rich  people  that  didn't  care  for  anything  but  money, 
and  didn't  know  any  more  about  art  than  they  did  about 
geometry.  I  daresay  their  houses  were  full  of  Rogers's 
statuary  and  prize  chromos.  The  only  way  to  sell 
them  pictures  would  have  been  by  the  yard  or  the 
pound.  It  wasn't  even  worth  while  to  show  them  my 
pictures ;  they  would  have  been  pearls  before  swine," 
Evelyn  finished  contemptuously. 

"Well,  who  bought  them,  then?  You  did  sell 
some,"  Van  Cleve  asked ;  he  was  used  to  their  teacup- 
tempests  of  disapproval  and  denunciation,  their  violent 
likes  and  dislikes,  and  seldom  gave  himself  the  trouble 
of  looking  for  a  cause  ;  but  this  promised  to  be  interest 
ing.  "Some  of  the  swine  must  have  known  a  pearl 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  341 

when  they  saw  it,"  he  said,  restraining  a  certain  incli 
nation  to  laugh.  Evelyn  saw  it,  however,  and  flushed 
angrily. 

"Oh,  I  know  what  you're  thinking,  Van  Cleve,  but 
other  people  appreciate  my  work,  people  who  have  seen 
a  great  deal  more,  and  know  more  about  art  than  you 
do  ;  Mr.  Gebhardt,  for  instance  !" 

"  That's  so,  he  bought  one  when  he  was  down  there. 
He  showed  it  to  me  out  at  the  house,  I  remember.  I 
thought  it  was  pretty  good,"  said  Van  Cleve,  cordially ; 
"  who  took  the  others  ?  You  seem  to  have  a  good  many 
left  still."  He  glanced  about  at  the  walls,  which,  in 
fact,  were  as  well  covered  as  ever. 

"Mr.  Gebhardt,"  said  Evelyn,  with  a  shade  less  con 
fidence  than  before;  and  this  time  Van  Cleve  was 
openly  astonished. 

"What  ?  All  ?  The  whole  four  or  five  hundred  dol 
lars'  worth,  I  mean?  Thunderation  ! "  he  ejaculated; 
and  paused  with  a  puzzled  face.  "It's  funny  he  never 
said  a  word  to  me  about  them.  He  only  showed  me  that 
one."  And  now  he  looked  at  the  three  women,  sudden 
suspicion  growing  in  his  quick,  light  eyes.  "How  many 
pictures  did  he  take,  Evie  ?  " 

Everybody  again  began  talking  at  once. 

"Why,  it  was  four  —  he  took  —  that  is,  there 
were  four  of  them,  Van.  But  you  don't  quite  under 
stand  —  at  least  you  don't  seem  quite  to  have  under 
stood  - 

"I  didn't  want  them  to  do  it,  Van  Cleve;  I  knew  you 
wouldn't  like  it,  but  they  would,  anyhow  -  "his  grand 
mother  cried. 

"You  see  it  —  it  wasn't  a  sale  exactly  - 

"Well,  Mr.  Gebhardt  can  have  them  whenever  he 
sends.  It's  the  same  thing  - 

Van  Cleve  silenced  them  with  a  gesture.  "One  at 
a  time,"  he  said  with  a  voice  and  expression  so  like  the 
late  lamented  Joshua  that  his  grandmother  jumped 


342  VAN  CLEVE: 

and  gasped.  "I  want  to  know  what  you've  been  doing. 
Aunt  Myra,  will  you  please  tell  me  ?  I  said,  one  at  a 
time,  Evie.  Now  Aunt  Myra,  will  you  go  ahead  ?  " 

"Van  Cleve,  you  know  it  was  when  we  wanted  to 
come  here,  and  we  couldn't  bear  to  worry  you  after 
you  said  you  —  you  couldn't  let  us  move  again,  and  we 
thought  we'd  have  to  stay  there  in  that  horrible  place 
forever,  and  oh,  Van,  you  can't  have  any  idea  how  ter 
rible  it  was  !  We  couldn't  stand  it.  It  was  killing  us 
all.  We  had  every  one  of  us  been  down  with  coast 
fever,  and  the  colored  servants  were  so  lazy  and  dirty 
and  disgusting ;  just  think,  the  last  one  I  had  went  off 
and  left  the  muffin-pans  stuck  away  in  the  back  of  the 
closet  with  some  of  the  batter  in  them  !  And  the  doc 
tor  said  we  were  all  the  kind  of  constitutions  that  would 
never  get  acclimated,  never.  Van  Cleve,  we  were  just 
desperate  -  "  Mrs.  Lucas  had  to  stop  for  breath ;  Van 
Cleve  waited  patiently ;  he  had  no  doubt  of  presently 
getting  to  the  truth,  for  they  were  truthful  and  upright 
women. 

"So  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Gebhardt.  You  know  he  had 
told  us  over  and  over  again  that  very  time  when  he  was 
there,  and  bought  ' Moonlight  on  the  Bayou,'  that  he 
would  do  anything  in  the  world  to  help  you,  financially, 
or  any  way,  and  wished  he  could  have  the  chance.  So  I 
wrote  him  just  how  it  was  :  that  you  couldn't  afford  to 
move  us,  and  we  didn't  want  to  be  any  more  of  a  drain 
on  you,  when  you  were  trying  so  hard  to  get  ahead. 
Only  it  was  a  case  of  life  and  death,  and  we  must  do 
something,  for  a  little  more  of  Pass  Christian  would 
finish  us  all.  And  I  told  him  that  Evelyn  had  four 
pictures  that  she  would  let  him  have  for  five  hundred 
dollars ;  she  considers  them  her  best  work,  and  you 
know,  Van,  they  have  been  exhibited  and  wonderfully 
spoken  of  by  the  finest  critics  in  the  country.  I  enclosed 
the  newspaper  clippings  so  that  he  could  see  for  himself," 
said  Mrs.  Lucas,  impressively ;  "I  wanted  him  to  know 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  343 

that  he  would  be  getting  a  bargain,  that  it  wasn't  just 
talk  on  my  part  - 

"I  begged  you  not  to  do  it  —  I  said  Van  Cleve 
wouldn't  like  it/'  reiterated  the  old  lady. 

"Well,  no,  I  don't  like  that  sort  of  thing,"  Van  said, 
temperately;  "but  I  suppose  there's  no  harm  in  it, 
since  all  artists  do  it,  I'm  told.  I  wouldn't  like  Mr. 
Gebhardt  to  think  that  I  was  putting  you  up  to  it, 
that's  all.  He  might,  you  know.  However,  it  can't  be 
helped  now,"  he  meditatively  rubbed  his  chin.  "Did 
he  take  them  at  that  price  ?" 

"No,  he  didn't  take  them  at  all  —  oh,  Van  Cleve,  he 
was  perfectly  lovely,  he  is  the  dearest  man  !"  cried  Eve 
lyn.  "He  wrote  back  a  beautiful  letter  and  said  that 
he  would  be  proud  to  own  any  pictures  from  the  same 
brush  as  his  beautiful  '  Moonlight  on  the  Bayou ' ; 
but  he  didn't  want  to  take  advantage  of  me  that  way  ; 
and  that  he  had  often  thought  what  a  pleasure  it  must 
be  to  do  something  towards  helping  struggling  talent, 
because  genius  always  did  have  to  struggle,  no  matter 
how  great  it  was,  and  I  was  no  exception  to  that  rule ; 
and  if  I  would  accept  it,  he  — " 

"He'd  give  you  the  money,  but  you  could  keep  the 
pictures,  is  that  it  ?"  said  Van  Cleve. 

"Yes,  but  he  put  it  in  the  sweetest,  most  delicate  way. 
We  couldn't  refuse  flat,  Van,  it  would  have  been  horrid ; 
so  Mama  wrote  — 

"I  wrote  and  told  him  how  much  we  appreciated  his 
noble,  generous  offer,  and  how  we  hoped  he  wouldn't 
think  us  ungrateful,  if  we  considered  it  as  a  loan,  not  a 
gift,"  said  Mrs.  Lucas,  eagerly;  "I  told  him  we  would 
keep  the  pictures  since  he  wanted  us  to,  but  as  far  as  we 
were  concerned  they  would  be  security  for  his  money, 
and  he  could  have  them  any  time.  And  he  wrote  back 
and  said  that  was  perfectly  satisfactory.  So  you  see  it 
was  nothing  but  an  ordinary  business  transaction  after 
all,  Van  Cleve,  and  you  mustn't  worry  about  it,  you 


344  VAN   CLEVE: 

dear  boy;  we  wouldn't  be  so  hateful  and  selfish  as  to  do 
anything  that  would  cause  you  one  minute's  worry." 

Van  Cleve  sat  silent,  rubbing  his  chin,  while  all  the 
women  gazed  at  him  a  little  apprehensively;  not  in 
deed  that  they  were  in  the  least  anxiety  about  the  wis 
dom  and  righteousness  of  their  own  recent  course,  but 
it  was  sometimes  so  difficult  to  bring  Van  Cleve  to  their 
point  of  view;  with  all  his  splendid,  manly  qualities 
he  was  often  so  stubborn  and  unreasonable  !  However, 
instead  of  scolding  or  arguing,  he  dismissed  the  matter 
with  an  extraordinary  speech,  a  speech  which  had  no 
apparent  relation  to  anything  he  or  any  of  them  had 
said  hitherto. 

"I  guess  the  laugh's  on  me  !"  were  his  words,  uttered 
with  that  semi-humorous  dryness  which  they  resented 
without  knowing  why ;  and  he  addressed  Mrs.  Van  Cleve 
with  a  startlingly  abrupt  change  of  subject.  "Oh, 
Grandma,  tell  me  again  about  that  time  when  Grandpa 
wouldn't  buy  you  that  carpet  you  wanted,  will  you  ?  " 

Six  months  later,  the  Van  Cleve  ladies,  like  all  the 
other  people  of  unimpeachable  integrity,  were  denounc 
ing  the  wretched  president  of  the  National  Loan  high 
and  low.  They  were  painfully  disappointed  in  him; 
they  had  thought  him  so  fine,  so  strong  — "but,  as  you 
know,  Van  Cleve  dearest,  we  saw  a  great  deal  of  him 
and  the  family  that  winter  at  Pass  Christian ;  and 
though  I  shrank  from  speaking  of  it,  I  used  sometimes 
to  notice  a  kind  of  sly  look  in  Mr.  Gebhardt's  eyes  that 
rather  worried  me.  And  then  there  was  all  that  studied 
attention  to  us  ;  I  felt  an  intuitive  distrust  of  it,  and  kept 
trying  to  put  it  out  of  my  mind  -  '  Mrs.  Lucas  wrote 
in  a  letter  that  Van  Cleve  threw  aside  with  an  impa 
tient  word.  Neither  his  humor  nor  his  philosophy 
served  him  much  these  days ;  if  he  had  no  respect  for 
his  late  employer,  Van  still  felt  a  certain  liking  and  a 
certain  pity  for  him.  The  friendly  associations  of  ten 
years  are  not  easily  forgotten ;  and  no  matter  how  much 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  345 

Gebhardt  deserved  it,  nor  how  imperative  Van's  desire 
to  do  his  duty,  he  did  not  relish  the  part  he  must  play. 
I  declare  I  myself  have  felt  sorry  for  the  poor,  visionary, 
free-handed,  warm-hearted,  mistaken  gentleman ;  I 
do  not  like  to  think  of  his  blonde  beard  and  his  Viking 
presence  haled  before  a  court  and  jury,  and  all  his  dreams 
and  schemes  and  foolish  wrongdoing  ruthlessly  exposed. 
(Oh,  Xylotite,  how  many  crimes  have  been  committed 
in  thy  name  !  as  some  wit  brilliantly  remarked  while  the 
investigation  was  going  forward.)  Sentiment  is  of 
course  quite  thrown  away  on  such  a  scoundrel,  and  any 
way  it's  years  since  it  all  happened,  and  Gebhardt  must 
be  "out"  by  this  time,  some  one  was  saying  the  other 
day,  and  so  has  a  chance  to  begin  life  over  again  —  at 
seventy  !  His  wife  stuck  to  him  through  it  all. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ANOTHER  BUSINESS  WOMAN 

THE  Vermont  sanatorium  did  so  much  for  Bob  Gil 
bert  that  in  less  than  a  year  he  came  back  looking,  to  be 
sure,  not  fully  restored  or  as  if  he  ever  would  reach  nor 
mal  health  and  strength  again,  but  much  better  than 
anybody  had  expected,  fleshier,  his  color  tolerably  good 
and  cough  almost  gone ;  and  he  himself,  as  usual,  un- 
quenchably  sanguine.  "Oh,  yes,  the  symptoms  were 
tubercular,"  he  would  acknowledge  with  a  fine  air  of 
superiority  and  detachment ;  "  the  doctors  all  told  me  so. 
In  old  times  you'd  have  felt  as  if  your  death-warrant 
had  been  signed,  and  would  have  made  your  will  and 
laid  right  down.  I  believe  people  died  of  pure  fright 
as  much  as  of  the  disease.  It's  different  now  ;  we  know 
so  much  more  about  treatment  and  —  and  all  that.  I 
took  it  in  time,  and  it  never  got  any  real  hold  on  me.  Of 
course  they  keep  telling  me  to  be  careful ;  but  I  expect 
to  keep  even  with  it,  and  eventually  to  get  it  under. 
I've  always  been  lucky  about  that  —  coming  out  even, 
you  know,  or  a  little  better."  And  with  his  laugh, 
which  always  ended  in  a  little  choke,  Robert  would 
change  the  subject.  He  never  spoke  about  his  health 
at  all  unless  directly  questioned. 

He  wanted  to  get  something  to  do  at  once,  and  talked 
very  eagerly  and  insistently  about  "  getting  back  into 
harness"  ;  perhaps  he  was  governed  as  much  by  a  subtle 
anxiety  to  have  his  theories  about  his  renewed  health 
confirmed  even  to  himself,  as  by  any  real  motive  of 
ambition  or  industry,  for  he  was  not  naturally  ambitious 

346 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  347 

or  industrious.  But  now  he  sought  work  feverishly, 
canvassing  his  friends,  haunting  offices  and  salesrooms, 
attacking  all  sorts  of  unlikely  people,  offering  himself 
for  positions  he  could  no  more  have  filled  than  that  of 
Secretary  of  State.  In  fact,  it  would  have  been  hard  to 
name  one  for  which  Bob  was  qualified,  he  had  had  so 
little  training,  either  business  or  professional ;  and  his 
friends  were  sorely  put  to  it  for  terms  in  which  to  recom 
mend  him.  They  could  say  that  Bob  was  honest,  for, 
with  all  his  failings,  nobody  ever  knew  him  to  tell  a  lie, 
and  he  would  have  gone  to  the  gallows  sooner  than  take 
a  cent  that  was  not  rightfully  his  own.  Is  that  all  that 
honesty  means  ?  I  do  not  know,  but  I  suspect  not.  At 
any  rate,  one  could  have  sworn  with  a  clear  conscience 
that  Robert  could  be  trusted ;  but  when  it  came  to 
fitness  and  efficiency  and  stability  — !  However,  he 
might  keep  straight  now ;  at  least,  he  could  not  go  far 
on  his  old  paths,  without  his  sadly  abused  body  giving 
out  altogether,  and  that  fear  might  prevail  with  him, 
weak  and  yielding  as  he  was.  For  the  sake  of  the 
family  every  one  did  his  best  for  Bob  ;  but  bad  luck  — 
or  what  he  considered  bad  luck  —  dogged  him  unswerv 
ingly.  For  a  while  he  held  some  sort  of  small  clerk's 
position  with  the  Antarctic  Ice  Company,  a  business 
enterprise  which  had  collapsed  recently,  and  was  being 
run  by  a  receiver  (Stuart  Nicholson,  the  same  Mr. 
Nicholson  who  was  at  that  time  so  attentive  to  Lorrie 
Gilbert) .  Bob  may  have  been  doing  well  enough  - 
nobody  knew  —  but  anyhow  the  receivership  presently 
ended,  the  company  got  on  its  legs  again,  and  in  the 
changes  of  its  reorganization,  they  let  Robert  go.  Then 
the  Park  Superintendent,  an  old  friend  of  his  father's, 
got  or  made  him  a  place  under  him  at  the  City  Buildings ; 
but  unfortunately  the  Park  Superintendent,  happening 
to  be  a  gentleman  and  an  honest  man  who  had  been 
elevated  to  this  civic  office  "by  a  fluke"  (people  said), 
speedily  fell  into  disfavor  with  our  gang-elected  Mayor 


348  VAN   CLEVE: 

and  other  authorities,  and  was  deposed  along  with 
whatever  associates  he  had  gathered,  in  the  political 
shake-up  the  very  next  autumn.  So  there  was  Robert 
on  the  market  again.  After  that,  Van  Kendrick  be 
stirred  himself  and  found  several  small  jobs  of  collecting 
for  Bob  to  do  —  an  absurd  effort,  really,  for  if  there  was 
a  thing  on  earth  for  which  Bob  had  not  even  a  vestige  of 
taste  or  capacity  it  was  running  around  after  other  people 
to  make  them  pay  their  debts.  The  idea  of  that  shift 
less,  easy-going  fellow  harrying  other  delinquents  as 
shiftless  and  easy-going  as  himself  was  ludicrous ;  they 
could  make  him  believe  any  cock-and-bull  story,  or 
work  on  his  sympathies  until  he  would  be  ready  to 
empty  his  own  pockets  to  save  theirs  !  At  the  end  of 
six  months,  having  conclusively  demonstrated  how  not 
to  do  collecting,  Bob  was  out  of  employment  once  more. 
And  about  this  time,  it  began  to  be  rumored  that  he  was 
drinking  again. 

I  cannot  now  recall  all  his  other  attempts  and  failures, 
nor  follow  his  alternate  backslidings  and  rehabilitations. 
One  met  him  from  time  to  time,  now  shabby  and  run 
down,  now  clean  and  confident,  now  idle  for  months, 
and  again  working  with  a  hectic  energy,  full  of  excite 
ment  and  enthusiasm,  always  thin  and  coughing,  yet 
somehow  never  seeming  to  be  much  worse.  It  went 
on  for  five  years ;  people  were  constantly  prophesying 
his  decline  and  death  and  wondering  how  the  family 
could  bear  to  watch  the  process,  or  telling  one  another 
with  pitying  indignation  that  it  was  hard  to  say  which 
must  be  the  more  painful  and  humiliating  spectacle  for 
his  father  and  mother  and  poor  Lorrie ;  Bob  on  one  of 
his  sprees,  or  Bob  sober  and  half-alive  with  one  lung 
gone,  trying  unsuccessfully  to  support  himself  in  ways 
the  average  bright  boy  of  sixteen  would  disdain.  He 
was  assistant  to  the  veterinary  surgeon  that  had  the 
animal  hospital  on  Sycamore  Street,  at  one  time ;  and 
he  tried  working  with  a  market-gardener  on  one  of  the 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  349 

little  Mill  Creek  Valley  truck-farms ;  but  that  only 
lasted  a  very  short  while,  for  by  that  time  he  was  not 
strong  enough  even  for  that  light  labor,  and  the  open- 
air  winter  reversed  all  theories  by  doing  him  more  harm 
than  good.  The  last  place  he  had  was  at  the  Hotel 
Preston,  the  big  new  hotel  put  up  by  the  Preston  Estate 
in  1907.  It  is  a  handsome  establishment  in  the  most 
approved  hotel  style  with  canopies  of  glass  and  wrought- 
iron  over  the  entrances,  and  half  a  dozen  elegant  little 
shops  along  the  front,  where  persons  of  sufficient  afflu 
ence  may  buy  candies,  "gents'  furnishings,"  and  rich 
blue  brocade  corsets.  Within  there  is  a  rotunda  with 
frescoes  and  a  musicians'  gallery ;  and  many  resplendent 
rooms  upstairs  occupied  mostly  by  New  York  tailors 
and  milliners  on  tour  with  displays  of  their  goods. 
Robert  was  in  the  small  booth  near  the  lesser  door  for 
ladies,  in  charge  of  the  supply  of  cheap  umbrellas  which 
the  management  benevolently  hires  out  to  people  who 
have  been  caught  unprotected  in  a  shower.  I  saw  him 
there  myself  when  I  darted  into  the  Preston  in  the  middle 
of  a  storm  one  day. 

There  he  was,  in  the  hotel  uniform  and  buttons,  like 
the  bell-boys,  handing  out  umbrellas,  taking  the  names 
on  little  pasteboard  checks  and  putting  away  the  money, 
with  quite  a  long  line  of  hurried  and  impatient  custom 
ers  before  him  whom  he  served  briskly,  civilly,  and  with 
out  confusion.  We  recognized  each  other  at  the  same 
instant ;  and  his  manners  were  better  than  mine,  for 
whereas  I  stopped  short,  and  hesitated,  feeling  sicken- 
ingly  sorry  and  ashamed,  Bob  kept  a  perfectly  placid 
face  and  matter-of-fact  air,  nodded  with  his  nice  smile, 
and  went  on  dispensing  umbrellas  until  it  came  to  my 
turn,  as  if  that  were  one  of  the  most  worthy  and  suitable 
of  occupations  for  an  educated  man,  thirty-five  years 
old,  and  born  and  bred  a  gentleman. 

"You  didn't  get  wet,  I  hope.  I  never  saw  anything 
like  the  sudden  way  that  rain  came  up,"  he  said  when 


350  VAN  CLEVE: 

I  reached  his  counter.  He  looked  about  as  usual,  with 
a  high  color  and  large,  brilliant,  hollow  eyes ;  and  he  did 
not  smell  at  all  of  whiskey.  I  do  not  know  why  I 
should  have  been  so  unhappily  embarrassed,  unless  it 
was  because  I  could  not  keep  Professor  Gilbert  with 
his  Sanskrit  and  his  scholastic  dignities  out  of  my  head  ; 
and  Bob's  mother  with  her  pretty,  waving  gray  hair ; 
and  Bob  himself  as  a  boy ;  and  other  days,  other  memo 
ries,  that  were  not  so  very  old,  as  years  go,  but  might 
have  been  a  century  past  by  comparison.  I  tried  to 
speak  naturally. 

"I  didn't  know  you  were  here,  Bob." 

"Well,  of  course  you  wouldn't  be  likely  to.  You 
don't  come  in  very  often,  I  expect ;  nobody  ever  knows 
much  about  the  hotels  in  their  own  town.  I've  been 
here  two  months  —  ever  since  it  opened,"  he  said  sim 
ply.  "  This  is  a  nice  one.  You  have  to  leave  a  dollar, 
you  know." 

I  could  think  of  nothing  more  to  say,  so  got  the  money 
out  in  silence  and  watched  him  put  my  name  down, 
lingering  in  a  wretched  uncertainty.  "Why,  you're 
left-handed,  aren't  you?"  I  said  at  last,  idiotically,  as 
he  tried  the  umbrella  to  see  if  it  was  in  good  order,  and 
passed  it  over. 

"Eh?  Why  no,  not  naturally.  I've  been  learning 
to  use  that  arm,  on  account  of  having  some  trouble  with 
my  right  here  recently,"  he  explained  indifferently; 
"some  kind  of  neuralgia  or  neuritis  or  something." 

The  right  lung  was  the  one  that  was  gone  —  or  going 
—  undoubtedly ;  I  might  have  guessed  it,  and  refrained 
from  questions,  if  I  had  not  been  so  flustered.  After 
this  maladroit  effort,  I  stammered  out  some  sort  of 
good-by  and  was  about  to  retreat  thankfully ;  but  the 
bad  quarter  of  an  hour  was  not  yet  ended.  Before  I 
could  move,  a  lady  stepped  out  of  the  azure  corset- 
shop  which  opened  on  this  corridor  near  at  hand,  turned 
towards  the  door,  saw  the  rain,  and  turned  back  quickly. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  351 

She  walked  up  to  the  umbrella  booth.  She  was  dressed 
in  a  beautiful  dark  blue  linen  suit,  that  fitted  with  in 
comparable  snugness  over  a  figure  of  smooth,  unyield 
ing,  accurate  curves  surpassing  those  of  the  whale- 
boned  and  pompadour-ribboned  dummies  we  could  see 
through  the  plate-glass  doors  behind  her;  her  fawn- 
colored  hair  was  arranged  like  theirs  in  regular,  petrified 
waves  glossy  with  brilliantine,  under  a  neat,  stiff  hat 
with  dark  blue  quills  and  ribbons  smartly  applied.  She 
came  up  to  the  stand,  and  the  light  struck  full  on  her 
face,  and  I  would  have  known  her  in  a  thousand. 
"Can  I  get  an  umb  —  ?"  she  began;  and  broke  short 
off,  staring.  It  was  Paula  Jameson  —  Gilbert  —  what 
ever  she  called  herself  —  Bob's  divorced  wife ;  all  three 
of  us  stood  a  moment  dumb. 

I  do  not  know  what  I  should  have  done  —  what 
would  have  been  the  proper  and  humane  thing  to  do, 
that  is ;  run  away  as  if  I  were  afraid  of  being  caught 
with  them?  Or  stay  as  if  I  wanted  to  see  what  they 
were  going  to  do  ?  Actually  I  contrived  to  do  neither ; 
it  all  happened  too  quickly.  Paula  —  she  seemed  to 
be  merely  surprised,  not  at  all  disconcerted  —  recovered 
almost  at  once,  and  knew  me  and  spoke  to  me  by 
name;  and  she  said,  "Why,  hello,  Bob!"  and  put 
out  her  hand  to  him,  too  ! 

He  took  it  automatically,  and  said,  "How  do  you 
do  ?"  looking  at  her  helplessly.  Paula  kept  on  talking, 
not  to  relieve  the  situation,  for  it  was  plain  she  herself 
felt  no  awkwardness  about  it,  but  as  it  would  seem  out 
of  the  fulness  of  her  heart !  She  asked  both  of  us  if 
the  folks  were  well.  She  inquired  after  several  other 
people.  She  said  warmly:  "Well,  this  little  old  burg 
has  waked  up  at  last,  hasn't  it  ?  Look  at  the  new  sky 
scrapers  !  And  let  me  tell  you  there  aren't  many 
hotels  in  this  part  of  the  country  that  have  got  anything 
on  this  one.  If  they'd  only  get  a  bunch  of  porters  with 
caps  and  uniforms  and  numbers  down  at  the  Grand 


352  VAN   CLEVE: 

Central  to  grab  your  grip  when  you  get  off  the  train, 
why,  the  town'd  be  right  up  to  date!"  And  she 
laughed,  showing  all  her  teeth,  which  were  as  pretty 
and  white  and  flawless  as  ever ;  and  a  tiny  crease  in 
one  cheek  that  used  to  be  a  dimple  years  ago.  She 
was  astonishing.  I  believe  the  woman  was  glad  to 
get  back  here,  glad  to  see  us,  glad  to  talk  to  us.  Let 
me  give  no  false  impression ;  Paula's  hail-fellow-well- 
met  manner  was  not  in  the  least  brazen  or  self-asser 
tive  ;  one  sensed  a  kind  of  good  feeling  in  her  very 
lack  of  feeling.  She  could  not  be  a  gentlewoman, 
nor  even  look  like  one ;  but  for  all  her  teetering  high 
heels,  and  her  tortured  waist,  and  her  carefully  made-up 
complexion,  and  the  breezy  assurance  of  her  address, 
she  was  absolutely  respectable.  Her  respectability 
clothed  her  visibly,  like  her  blue  linen  suit ;  she  had  the 
air  of  being  armed  and  bucklered  against  the  world 
and  the  wiles  of  men,  supplied  with  an  arsenal  of  morals, 
and  ready  to  open  fire  at  the  slightest  hostile  demon 
stration. 

I  edged  away  at  last,  and  was  escaping,  but  Paula 
interrupted  her  eager  chatter  —  she  was  actually 
asking  Bob  what  that  friend  of  his,  Mr.  Kendrick, 
was  doing,  and  whether  he  and  Lorrie  had  made  a 
match  of  it  yet !  —  to  run  after  me.  "  Oh,  do  you  have 
to  go  ?  Can't  you  stay  a  minute  ?  It's  raining  cats 
and  dogs  still,"  she  said,  and  seized  my  arm  confiden 
tially  ;  i '  can't  you  just  come  upstairs,  and  let  me  show  you 
our  display?  I  know  you'll  like  it,  and  I'd  love  to 
show  you.  The  things  are  awfully  pretty,  and  the 
very  latest  wrinkles  —  right  straight  from  Paree,  you 
know,  the  swellest  ever.  Oh,  say,  do  come !  Our 
prices  aren't  sky-high,  either,  but  anyway  you  don't 
have  to  buy  anything,  you  know ;  I'd  just  love  to  have 
you  see  'em.  Say,  can't  you?  Well,  all  right,  then, 
but  I'm  going  to  be  here  for  three  days,  so  you'll  come 
in  some  other  time,  won't  you?  Didn't  you  get  one 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  353 

of  our  cards  ?  Well  if  that  ain't  the  limit !  I 
know  you  must  have  been  down  on  our  list ;  we  get 
all  the  names  out  of  'Who's  Who.'  Here,  take  this 
one.  And  say,  mention  me  to  your  friends,  will  you  ? 
I  expect  some  of  them  remember  me,  anyhow.  This  is 
the  first  time  I've  ever  made  Cincinnati  on  a  trip,  and 
I'd  like  to  work  up  a  trade  here  for  the  firm." 

The  leaflet  she  pressed  on  me  was  handsomely  en 
graved  at  the  top  with  a  crest,  the  head  of  a  Roman 
emperor  (to  all  appearances)  enclosed  in  a  wreath,  and 
underneath  in  minute  lettering:  "L.  Bloch,  325  Fifth 
Avenue,  New  York,  N.Y."  Farther  down  it  announced 
in  flourishing  script  that  M.  Levi  Bloch,  of  Paris, 
Vienna,  and  New  York,  desired  to  call  my  attention 
to  the  display  of  samples  from  his  ateliers  wliich  would 
be  on  view  at  the  Hotel  Preston,  Parlors  A  and  B,  the 
24th,  25th,  26th.  Corsets,  Brassieres,  Garters,  Silk 
Stockings,  Woven  and  Piece  Silk  Combinations,  etc. 
Exclusive  agents  for  La  Sylphide  Empire  girdle.  Ex 
pert  fitters  would  be  in  attendance,  and  their  represen 
tative,  Mme.  Clarice,  would  give  my  order  her  personal 
supervision. 

"I  wish  you'd  come  up;  you  might  look  around 
while  you're  waiting  for  the  rain  to  hold  up,  anyhow, 
couldn't  you?"  said  Paula,  nudging  me  towards  the 
elevator.  "Say,  come  on!"  And  shrewdly  keeping 
a  firm  grip  on  my  arm,  she  turned  and  called  a  familiar 
good-by  to  Bob,  over  her  shoulder.  "See  you  later  !" 
He  did  not  answer;  indeed,  he  had  hardly  spoken  at 
all  throughout  the  incident. 

Paula  piloted  me,  unresisting,  yet  inwardly  amazed 
at  the  feebleness  of  my  compliance,  up-stairs  and  to 
Parlors  A  and  B,  where,  in  fact,  there  was  a  sumptuous 
parade  of  Corsets,  Brassieres,  Combinations,  and  all 
the  rest  of  it.  She  had  a  couple  of  mannequins  there, 
good-looking  young  women  all  Marcel  waves  and 
glittering  finger  nails,  who  surveyed  me  with  the 


354  VAN   CLEVE: 

extraordinary  deferential  patronage  of  their  kind; 
and  I  noticed  that  Paula  herself  exhibited  that  manner 
to  perfection  as  she  guided  me  about.  She  put  it 
on  like  a  glove  for  the  benefit  of  her  underlings,  holding 
up  one  garment  after  another,  and  murmuring  prices 
in  confidence ;  and  blarneyed  me  into  buying  an  ex 
pensive  harness  of  sky-blue  moire",  lace,  and  silver 
buckles,  which  I  have  never  had  on  from  that  day  to 
this,  in  a  style  no  Parisian  saleswoman  could  have 
bettered.  It  was  inconceivable  that  "that  little  Paula 
Jameson"  could  have  developed  into  so  able  and 
distinguished  a  personage  as  Madame  Clarice,  but  such 
was  the  fact !  And  in  a  moment  when  we  were  alone, 
I  had  the  hardihood  to  ask  her  a  question  or  two  about 
the  process. 

She  was  not  in  the  least  offended ;  I  think  she  took 
my  curiosity  and  surprise  rather  as  a  compliment ! 
"Why,  I  just  kind  of  fell  into  it,"  she  said.  "I've 
been  in  it  now  for  four  years.  I  had  to  do  something, 
you  know.  After  Momma  died — that  was  in  nineteen- 
two  —  no,  three  —  I've  lost  count,  but  it  was  along 
there  some  time  —  well,  after  she  died,  I  found  we  just 
didn't  have  anything  left.  We'd  lived  it  all  up.  Momma 
didn't  know  much,  and  she  didn't  raise  me  to  know 
much,  either. -- Very  well,  Ongriette,  you  can  go  to 
your  luncheon  now,  and  right  afterwards  I  want  you 
to  take  those  garters  up  to  show  the  lady  in  217  that 
was  in  this  morning.  Tell  her  we  can  match  any  color 
of  corset  or  silk  lawngerie  she  selects ;  it's  so  chick  to 
have  everything  underneath  match."  And  as  the  girl 
departed,  Paula,  who  had  momentarily  resumed  her 
saleswoman's  elegance  of  deportment,  turned  to  me, 
relaxing  again. 

"We'd  simply  lived  everything  clean  up.  Momma 
never  did  have  much  head-piece,  you  know,"  she  ex 
plained  impartially.  "She'd  got  to  be  in  poor  health, 
and  it  was  a  good  thing  she  died  when  she  did ;  she'd 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  355 

have  been  an  awful  drag  on  me.  I  couldn't  have  taken 
care  of  her  and  made  a  living  for  both  of  us,  too.  As 
it  was,  she  died  and  never  knew  a  thing  about  it.  But 
my,  you  haven't  any  idea  what  a  time  I  had  afterwards  ! 
Why,  I  had  to  sell  some  jewellery  to  bury  her  with. 
Hey  ?  Why,  we  were  in  N' Yawk.  I  went  and  got  a  room 
in  one  of  those  perfectly  punk  boarding-houses  down 
near  Washington  Square.  You  haven't  any  idea  what 
a  time  I  had  !  I  didn't  know  what  to  do,  and  anyway 
there  wasn't  a  thing  I  could  do  —  not  even  sewing  or 
cooking.  If  I  hadn't  had  luck,  I  bet  I'd  have  been 
scrubbing  floors  this  minute.  First  I  thought  of  going  on 
the  stage  ;  but  pretty  soon  I  saw  that  wasn't  any  good. 
You  can  hang  around  the  theatrical  agencies  and  offices, 
and  hang  around  'em,  and  hang  around  'em,  till  your 
feet  drop  off,  and  you'll  never  get  a  look-in,  unless 
you've  a  friend  with  a  pull.  You  know  the  kind  of 
friend  I  mean."  She  paused  significantly,  and  I 
nodded. 

"Well,  I  wasn't  that  kind,"  Madame  Clarice  went 
on,  a  certain  hardness  settling  about  her  still  lovely 
mouth.  "Of  course  I  could  have  —  !"  She  shrugged. 
"But  what's  the  use?  I  just  felt  as  if  I  was  good  and 
done  with  men.  When  they  come  around  me  now, 
I  just  tell  'em  all  nix  on  that  talk.  It  don't  go  with  me. 
I've  seen  too  much.  I  don't  want  anything  more  to 
do  with  any  man,  except  in  a  business  way,  of  course. 
I  must  say  that  when  a  man's  got  his  head  set  on  busi 
ness,  he's,  generally  speaking,  a  perfect  gentleman. 
Well,  as  I  was  telling  you,  there  I  was  in  N'Yawk,  in 
a  hall-bedroom,  you  know,  without  a  cent  and  scared 
to  death  every  time  I  heard  the  landlady  coming  up 
stairs.  Then  one  day  I  had  an  idea.  I  got  it  from 
something  I  heard  a  girl  say  in  one  of  the  dramatic- 
bureau  places  I'd  been  going  to.  She  was  a  chorus- 
girl,  I  guess  —  looked  it  anyhow ;  and  I  heard  her  tell 
ing  the  man  that  she'd  been  in  a  coat-and-suit  model 


356  VAN   CLEVE: 

job  over  on  Sixth  Avenue,  ever  since  the  '  June  Roses' 
show  broke  up. 

"That  interested  me,  because  I  always  have  wanted 
to  know  what  they  did  in  between  times,  haven't  you  ? 
That's  where  I  got  my  idea,  too.  I  just  thought, 
'Why  shouldn't  I  be  a  coat-and-suit-model  ?  They 
get  good  money,  and  nothing  to  do  but  stand  around 
and  be  looked  at.  And  I've  got  enough  better  figure 
than  that  chorus-girl.'  So  one  day  I  put  on  my  things 
and  started  out. 

"Well,  it  wasn't  so  easy  as  I  thought,  but  I  finally 
did  land  a  job  with  a  ladies'  tailor  named  Blitz  on 
Thirty-second,  near  Broadway.  His  head-woman  was 
sick,  and  they  took  me  just  to  fill  in  while  she  was 
away.  What  he  wanted  was  more  of  a  saleslady  to 
show  the  things,  and  sort  of  jolly  people  along  than  a 
model.  It  wasn't  a  real  swell  place  like  they  have  on 
the  Avenue  —  like  this  one,  you  know  -  And  here 
Paula  sent  around  a  glance  of  proud  satisfaction  which 
was,  on  the  whole,  rather  agreeable  to  see.  She  got 
up  and  rearranged  a  negligee  of  opalescent-tinted 
crepe  and  silver  embroidery,  so  that  it  would  show  to 
better  advantage,  laid  carelessly  over  one  of  the  gilded 
Empire  chairs  of  Parlor  A ;  eyed  the  effect  a  second, 
with  her  head  on  one  side,  touched  the  folds  here  and 
there,  and  returned  to  her  chair  and  narrative. 

"Of  course  I  was  pretty  green  at  first,  but  by  the 
time  I'd  been  there  six  weeks,  I  could  see  I  was  mak 
ing  good  with  Blitz.  He  was  business  clear  through  ; 
kept  tab  on  your  sales,  and  got  every  ounce  of  work 
you  held  out  of  you.  However,  the  head  lady  came 
back  one  day,  and  she  hadn't  been  in  the  place  a  half 
hour  before  I  knew  it  would  presently  be  here's  your- 
hat-what's-your-hurry  for  me.  Mad  !  And  jealous  ! 
Whee!  And  the  worst  of  it  was  she  was  too  good  her 
self  for  Blitz  to  get  rid  of  her.  Smart  as  a  steel  trap, 
you  know,  sell  you  the  whole  stock  without  your  know- 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  357 

ing  it;  just  hypnotized  you  into  buying.  I  learned 
a  good  deal  watching  her.  My,  I've  often  thought 
how  mad  it  would  have  made  her  to  know  I  was  getting 
a  line  on  all  her  ways,  and  seeing  where  I  could  improve 
on  'em !  When  it  came  to  looks,  I  had  the  biggest 
kind  of  a  lead  over  her,  and  I  guess  that's  one  of  the 
things  that  made  her  sorest.  I  was  more  refined  style, 
you  know,  and  that's  very  hard  to  get  always ;  you 
don't  see  a  real  refined  one  every  day. 

"  However,  by  that  time,  I'd  made  some  acquaint 
ances  in  the  trade ;  so  when  I  left  Blitz,  I  didn't  have 
any  trouble  at  all  scarcely.  I  went  right  over  to  the 
Lawngerie  Department  at  Altman's.  But  I  hadn't 
been  there  any  time  at  all  before  a  man  I'd  met  that 
was  in  passementerie  and  fine  trimmings  came  to  me 
and  says :  '  Look  here,  what  you  doing  here  ?  This 
ain't  any  place  for  you.'  'Well, '  I  says,  'what  I'm 
doing  is  getting  my  little  fifteen  a  week.  Any  place 
where  I  can  make  that  is  the  place  for  me,  according 
to  the  way  I  figure  it.'  He  just  laughed.  He  says : 
' Fifteen!  Why,  you're  too  good  for  that.  Now  I've 
got  a  friend,'  he  says,  'with  the  Maison  Bloch,  name 
of  Sweeny,  he's  their  head-man  there,  and  he's  looking 
for  somebody  like  you.  You  can  put  it  all  over  any 
saleslady  he's  got.  Just  look  at  your  form  for  one 
thing ;  form's  everything  in  the  corset  trade.  Tell 
'em  you  wear  the  La  Delice  or  the  Cleo  or  the  X.Y.Z. 
or  any  old  style  you  choose,  and  they  look  at  your 
form  and  fall  for  it  every  time.  Now  I  want  to  take 
you  around  and  introduce  you  to  Sweeny.'  Of  course 
I  knew  that  meant  I  was  to  throw  Sweeny's  trade  his 
way  all  I  could,  but  I'd  just  as  lief.  He  had  a  first- 
class  line  of  goods,  and  one  good  turn  deserves  another, 
don't  it  ?  So  we  went  over  to  see  Sweeny,  and  sure 
enough,  didn't  he  engage  me  right  off !  Only  thing 
he  said  to  me  was:  'Say,  you  got  to  can  that  name. 
You  don't  want  to  be  Mrs.  Anybody  —  you've  got 


358  VAN   CLEVE: 

to  be  Madame  Something,  or  just  a  single  name  like 
Louise  or  Charlotte  or  Adelaide ;  that's  the  nifty 
thing  to  do.'  So  we  decided  on  Madame  Clarice. 
I  think  it  sounds  swell,  don't  you  ?  Madame  Clarice." 

I  expressed  due  admiration;  and  we  sat  silent  a 
moment,  Paula  thoughtfully  moving  and  replacing 
the  charming  little  sachet-bags,  jabots,  and  odds  and 
ends  spread  out  on  the  table  near  her. 

"It's  been  easy  for  you  ever  since,  I  suppose ?"  said 
I,  at  length. 

"Yes,  oh,  yes.  Well,  of  course,  I've  got  to  keep  on 
the  job  every  minute;  believe  me,  I  work.  But  I 
haven't  had  any  trouble;  I've  gone  right  along.  I 
make  two  trips  a  year,  South  in  winter  —  Palm  Beach, 
and  all  the  resorts,  you  know  —  and  North  in  summer. 
It's  funny  I  never  happened  to  come  here  before,  but 
I  believe  the  management  have  got  a  notion  it  isn't 
a  likely  place.  Anyway,  they  never  put  it  in  my  route. 
You  don't  know  how  queer  it  seemed  to-day  —  same 
old  town,  but  everything  different !" 

She  was  silent,  playing  with  the  trifles,  and  then 
spoke  abruptly:  "Bob  Gilbert  looks  awfully,  don't 
he?  I  don't  believe  he'll  live  long." 

She  said  this  with  an  air  of  detached  and  impersonal 
observation  startling  to  witness.  Whatever  their  ex 
periences  together  had  been,  it  was  evident  that  Paula 
cherished  no  resentment,  no  feeling  of  any  kind,  about 
her  ex-husband.  She  regarded  him  with  an  amiable 
indifference.  While  I  was  still  sitting  in  a  wordless 
confusion,  she  added  with  much  more  earnestness : 
"Lorrie  hasn't  ever  got  married,  he  said.  I  wonder 
why.  Do  you  suppose  it's  because  of  her  having  been 
engaged  to  —  to  —  ?  " 

"To  that  Mr.  Cortwright,  that  was  killed  in  the 
Spanish  War?"  I  supplied,  seeing  her  hesitate;  "why, 
yes,  that's  what  everybody  thinks." 

"I  thought  sure  she'd  marry  Mr.  Kendrick,"  said 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  359 

Paula,  gazing  into  space  with  a  meditative  frown. 
She  caught  sight  of  herself  in  a  mirror,  and  gave  a 
sound  of  consternation.  "My,  I've  got  into  such  a 
bad  habit  of  frowning  that  way !  Ain't  it  awful  ? 
I'll  have  my  forehead  full  of  wrinkles  if  I  don't  look  out." 
She  rubbed  her  finger-tips  across  it  anxiously. 

Some  customers  coming  in  just  then,  this  was  the  end 
of  the  interview ;  and  I  did  not  see  Madame  Clarice 
again,  although  she  invited  me  very  urgently,  and  kissed 
me  at  parting  !  It  was  to  be  feared  that  "she  had  diag 
nosed  Bob's  case  accurately ;  for  going  to  the  Preston 
next  day  to  turn  over  the  umbrella,  I  encountered  a 
stylishly  trim  young  woman  at  the  booth  in  his  place. 
And  in  answer  to  my  inquiry  she  told  me  that  the  regular 
clerk  had  been  taken  sick  yesterday  afternoon  and  had 
to  be  sent  home. 

"I  guess  he's  pretty  bad  off.  They  had  the  house 
doctor  to  fix  him  up,  and  he  took  him  out  to  where  he 
lives  in  a  cab.  I  heard  'em  say  he  had  a  hemorrhage, 
or  was  going  to  have  one,"  she  said. 


CHAPTER  VII 

IN    WHICH    WE     CALL    AT    THE     GILBERTS* 

ROBERT  was  indeed  very  sick.  The  attack  might 
have  been  attributed  to  the  shock  of  the  sudden  en 
counter  with  his  wife,  but  the  family  doctor,  hearing 
of  it,  shook  his  head.  It  was  a  coincidence,  he  said, 
nothing  more ;  the  machinery  was  worn  out,  and  must 
have  been  upon  the  verge  of  breaking  down  this  long 
while.  Of  course,  it  was  impossible  to  say  —  some 
times  these  cases  contradict  all  previous  experience 

-  Bob  might  live  for  several  months,  even  for  a  year 

-  or  he  might  drop  off  to-morrow.     The  only  thing 
to  do  was  to  try  to  keep  him  contented  and  in  ignorance ; 
there  would  probably  be   times   when   he  would   feel 
a  little  better  and  would  get  restless  and  want  to  get 
around  or  go  back  to  work,  but  that  wouldn't  last, 
he  was  physically  too  weak.     Just  don't  cross  him; 
let  him  do  what  he  could,  in  reason.     If  he  got  to  talk 
ing  about  going  away  somewhere  and  trying  some  other 
climate  as  he  had  done  before,  just  put  him  off ;    any 
excuse  would  do.     He  was  not  likely  to  suffer  acutely ; 
oh,  yes,  he  could  eat  anything,  give  him  anything  he 
liked.     As  long  as  the  weather  was  pleasant  this  way, 
he  might  stay  out  on  the  porch  most  of  the  time ;  they 
could  arrange  a  couch  or  a  reclining  chair  for  him  out 
there.     The   doctor  would   look   in   occasionally,  but, 
frankly,    there    was  nothing    he  could    do  —  nothing 
anybody    could    do.     He   looked    at    Lorrie    and   her 
mother  standing,   each  with  her  cold  hands  clasped 
tight  together,  listening  to  him  as  if  he  had  been,  what 

360 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  361 

surely  all  good  doctors  are,  a  kind  of  deputy-Deity 
-  the  doctor  looked  at  the  women  gravely  and  kindly, 
and  got  into  his  buggy  and  drove  away. 

This  sad  news  being  presently  spread  abroad,  all 
the  friends  of  the  family  —  and  the  Gilberts  had  made 
a  great  many  warm  and  devoted  and  steadfast  friend 
ships  —  were  quick  to  show  their  sympathy,  though 
nearly  every  one  privately  was  of  the  opinion  that  Bob's 
death  would  be  a  merciful  release.  The  poor  fellow 
never  would  have  reformed,  probably  could  not,  and 
there  was  nobody  who  could  be  better  spared ;  he 
had  never  been  anything  but  a  care  and  a  disgrace  to 
his  people,  to  everybody  that  ever  had  anything  to 
do  with  him.  But  all  that  ought  to  be  forgotten  now. 
Persons  who  had  long  ago  stopped  asking  after  him,  or 
recognizing  him  on  the  street,  now  called  at  the  house, 
brought  kind-hearted  offerings  of  books  and  fruit  and 
jellies  and  bottles  of  wine  and  air-pillows,  recommended 
other  physicians  and  wonderful  new  treatments,  hoped 
the  family  wouldn't  hesitate  to  call  on  them  in  case 
they  needed  outside  help  —  things  that  nurses  and 
doctors  couldn't  do,  you  know.  They  came  and  in 
sisted  on  taking  Lorrie  out  in  their  motor-cars,  whenever 
she  could  leave  the  invalid.  Sometimes  they  saw  him, 
for  a  few  minutes;  he  had  his  days  of  feeling  better 
or  worse.  Girls  he  had  gone  to  school  with,  married 
women  now  with  boys  of  their  own,  came  to  visit  him, 
putting  aside  the  fact  that  they  had  not  spoken  to  him 
in  years ;  but  they  always  had  liked  Bob  Gilbert, 
they  said,  he  was  so  nice  when  —  when  he  was  all  right. 
Even  little  old  Miss  Harriet  Peck,  the  primmest  mortal 
on  earth,  who  would  have  run  from  the  mere  sight  of 
Robert  (even  sober)  a  while  ago,  now  ventured  to  the 
house  and  sent  in  her  maidenly  card  with  a  tidy  little 
nosegay  of  heliotrope  and  lemon-verbena.  She  had 
been  his  Sunday-school  teacher  twenty-five  years  before. 
"  And  I  never  did  know  my  Collect,"  the  sick  man  said, 


362  VAN   CLEVE: 

surveying  the  gift  with  a  grin  ;  "she  must  have  forgiven 
me.  Does  she  wear  that  funny  little  pancake  bonnet 
with  the  gilt  arrow  stuck  through  a  bow  in  front  still, 
Lorrie?  I'd  like  to  see  Miss  Harriet;  can't  I  see 
her?" 

11  She's  gone.  I  don't  believe  she  was  quite  certain 
about  the  propriety  of  calling  on  a  gentleman,  especially 
after  I  told  her  you  were  lying  down,"  said  Lorrie, 
quickly.  The  fact  was,  she  had  actively  discouraged 
Miss  Peck,  who  had  arrived  with  a  Testament  under 
one  arm,  eager  to  administer  the  consolations  of  religion 
to  her  old-time  pupil  in  his  extremity. 

"As  soon  as  I'm  well  enough,  I'll  go  around  and  see 
the  old  girl.  It  was  very  kind  of  her  to  come," 
Robert  declared.  "  Everybody's  kind,  seems  to  me. 
I'll  have  lots  of  calls  to  make.  You  come  with  me,  will 
you,  Lorrie?" 

"Why,  of  course,  I'd  love  to,"  said  Lorrie,  smiling 
bravely. 

It  was  in  the  first  week  of  Bob's  sickness  that  they  had 
one  visitor  whom  it  never  would  have  occurred  to  them 
to  expect.  Robert,  as  the  doctor  had  prophesied, 
rallied  with  uncanny  swiftness,  and  already  they  had 
conveyed  him  to  a  cot  on  the  side-porch,  and  his 
mother  and  sister  were  sitting  there  with  him,  in  the 
mild  sunshine  —  it  was  in  September  —  Lorrie  reading 
aloud  from  the  morning  paper,  and  Mrs.  Gilbert 
constructing  the  first  of  a  series  of  fine  outing- 
flannel  night-shirts  which  she  was  confident  she 
could  make  better  and  infinitely  cheaper  than  the 
men's  haberdashers.  It  was  strange  how  quickly 
the  household  had  adjusted  itself  to  the  idea  of 
illness.  Bob  lay  there  quietly,  comfortably,  not 
looking  so  very  sick.  I  am  not  sure  that  there  was  not 
an  obscure  content  somewhere  in  the  depths  of  his 
mother's  heart  to  have  him  at  home  at  last  and  secure  ; 
it  was  hard  to  believe  that  he  could  not  go  on  forever 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  363 

in  this  state,  being  cared  for,  petted,  watched  over ; 
she  was  almost  happy  as  she  planned  his  night-shirts. 

As  they  sat  there,  they  heard  the  bell  ring,  and  heard 
the  servant's  footsteps  going  through  the  hall  and  some 
low- voiced  talk  at  the  front  door.  "  There's  the  post 
man,"  Bob  said.  But  some  one  came,  apparently 
with  an  anxious  caution,  into  the  sitting-room,  which 
opened  with  a  long  window  on  the  porch ;  and  directly 
their  maid  spoke  from  the  door.  "It's  a  lady  to  see 
you,  Miss  Lorrie.  She  didn't  give  any  card.  She 
just  said  she  wanted  to  see  you,"  said  the  girl. 

Lorrie  put  down  the  newspaper,  and  rose  with  a 
faint  grimace.  "They're  always  coming  in  like  that, 
on  tiptoe  and  holding  their  breath  as  if  —  as  if  — . 
Can't  they  see  that  the  real  kindness  would  be  to  be 
have  as  if  nothing  were  the  matter?"  she  said  to  her 
self  impatiently.  She  went  into  the  room,  which  was 
darkened  by  the  vines  and  roof  outside,  and,  making 
out  only  a  silhouette  of  the  visitor  standing  in  an  un 
certain  attitude  by  the  door,  spoke  with  a  cheerful 
ness  that,  had  she  known  it,  was  almost  as  artificial 
as  the  other's  labored  solicitude.  "How  do  you  do? 
I  can't  see  who  it  is ;  everything  looks  all  black  and 
green,  coming  in  here  out  of  the  light  —  but  how  do 
you  do,  anyhow!"  said  Lorrie,  gayly.  "Is  it  Mrs. 
-?"  Her  lips  stiffened  on  the  words;  she  had  gone 
up  quite  close  to  the  other,  but  stopped  stock-still 
with  her  hand  yet  outstretched. 

"I  guess  you  weren't  expecting  to  see  me,"  said  Paula. 
She  looked  at  Lome's  hand,  advanced  her  own  awk 
wardly,  then  withdrew  it  and  began  to  fumble  with 
the  clasps  and  chains  of  two  or  three  silver  trifles  that 
dangled  from  her  wrist  —  a  purse,  lorgnette,  and  what 
not.  She  shifted  her  parasol  to  the  curve  of  her  other 
arm,  and  pulled  at  the  edge  of  her  veil,  glancing  around 
the  room  with  a  kind  of  cringing  resolution.  "I  knew 
you'd  be  surprised  to  see  me,"  she  repeated ;  "I  didn't 


364  VAN   CLEVE: 

suppose  you'd  want  to,  but  I  —  I  came,  anyhow, 
Lorrie." 

"  Don't  speak  so  loud,"  said  Lorrie. 

"I  won't — I  didn't  mean  to—  "  said  Paula,  faltering 
and  shrinking. 

"My  brother  is  just  outside  the  window.  I  don't 
want  him  to  hear  you  suddenly.  He's  very  sick," 
said  Lorrie,  more  gently. 

"I  know.  I  knew  he  was  sick.  I  don't  want  to 
see  him.  I  didn't  come  to  see  him,"  Paula  whispered 
hastily  and  urgently;  she  even  retreated  a  step  in 
visible  fright.  "I  don't  want  to  see  him.  I  came  to 
see  you,  Lorrie." 

On  a  common  impulse,  they  moved  a  yard  or  so 
farther  away,  into  the  hall.  In  the  stronger  light  Paula 
examined  the  other  half  furtively,  half  openly,  with  a 
strangely  mixed  expression  combining  fear,  curiosity, 
bravado,  and  something  that  might  almost  have  been 
construed  as  regard.  Her  accurately  fashionable  dress, 
her  little  groomed  and  petted  body  with  all  its  good 
points  so  carefully  cherished  and  exhibited,  noticeable 
enough  elsewhere,  somehow  lost  all  distinction  and 
significance  in  Lome's  presence,  and  she  herself  seemed 
dimly  to  realize  it,  but  without  envy.  "Lorrie  Gilbert, 
you  haven't  changed  a  bit — not  a  speck  ! "  she  declared  ; 
"my,  I  wish  I  had  your  complexion  !  It's  the  way  you 
live,  I  suppose.  Tell  you,  New  York'll  get  away  with 
anybody's  looks,  no  matter  how  careful  they  are." 

"Hush!  Bob  will  hear  you,"  Lorrie  warned  her 
again,  and  drew  the  door  shut. 

"Oh,  you  don't  think  he  could,  do  you?  I  hope  not. 
I  —  I  don't  want  to  see  him,  Lorrie,"  said  Paula,  in 
a  panic.  "I  heard  he  was  going  to  die  —  I  don't 
want  to  see  him.  It's  true,  isn't  it  ?" 

"Yes,  it's  true,"  Lorrie  said.  As  she  surveyed 
Paula,  she  found  herself  on  a  sudden  thinking  of  her 
with  all  the  old  tolerance  and  pity.  Poor  Paula, 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  365 

poor  dull  creature  with  her  vanity,  her  petty  shrewd 
ness,  her  unconscious  brutality,  her  wofully  cheap 
morals,  poor  Paula  !  It  was  like  her  to  be  afraid  of 
Bob  because  he  was  dying,  like  her  to  come  here  to 
this  house  that  was  associated  with  an  experience  so 
shameful  no  other  woman  could  have  even  thought 
of  it,  much  less  seen  it,  without  invincible  shrinking. 
Merciful  Heaven,  she  had  not  entered  it  thus  since  that 
day,  nearly  ten  years  before,  when  Lorrie  had  taken 
her,  sick  and  sorry,  back  to  the  hotel ;  she  had  not  even 
seen  Lorrie  since  the  marriage.  Here  she  stood,  un 
easy,  ingratiating,  not  really  callous,  not  really  coarse, 
only  immutably  self-absorbed. 

"Can't  we  go  somewhere  and  talk,  where  he  can't 
hear  us?"  Paula  questioned;  "I'd  love  to  have  a 
good  long  talk  with  you,  Lorrie.  I  came  because  I 
wanted  to  talk  to  you." 

"  We  can  go  up-stairs  to  my  room  - 

"Well,  are  you  sure  he  won't  hear  us?  I  don't 
want  him  to  know  I'm  here,"  said  Paula,  a  little  timor 
ously.  "He  looked  awfully  badly  the  other  day. 
Did  he  tell  you  he  had  seen  me  ?  Did  he  say  anything 
about  me?" 

"Yes,  he  said  you  were  at  the  hotel.  He  said  you 
were  travelling  for  a  firm  of  ladies'  tailors,"  said  Lorrie, 
leading  the  way. 

"Well,  he  didn't  get  it  quite  right,  but  that  was 
near  enough,  for  a  man,  I  guess.  Hello,  it's  your 
same  old  room  !" 

Lorrie  silently  brought  forward  a  couple  of  chairs, 
but  the  other  did  not  at  once  sit  down.  Instead,  she 
flitted  lightly  about  the  room,  inspecting  and  com 
menting  on  the  pictures  and  bits  of  ornaments,  new  and 
old,  the  wall-paper,  the  curtains,  the  pincushion  - 
"I  see  you're  doing  that  eyelet-work;  that's  your  own 
w^ork,  isn't  it  ?  I've  got  a  friend  that  does  the  most 
simply  gorgeous  Irish  crochet.  She's  got  her  bureau- 


366  VAN   CLEVE: 

scarfs  all  made  of  it,  and  a  handkerchief -bedspread, 
the  squares  all  put  together  with  Irish  inserting,  and 
pink  China-silk  lining  showing  through  —  perfectly 
elegant.  The  same  thing  would  have  cost  forty-five 
dollars  at  McCutcheon's ;  I  priced  one.  Say,  you've 
changed  your  desk,  haven't  you?  Didn't  it  use  to 
be  over  there  by  the  mantelpiece  ?  Oh  !"  She  paused 
by  the  desk,  picking  up  a  photograph  in  a  silver  frame 
that  Lorrie  always  kept  standing  in  the  middle  of  the 
little  shelf ;  her  voice  changed  slightly  as  she  said : 
" That's  him,  isn't  it,  Lorrie?  Isn't  it  Mr.  Cort- 
wright  ?  " 

"Yes." 

Paula  carefully  relaxed  her  smart,  tightly-drawn, 
dotted  white  veil,  and  pushed  it  up,  and  studied  the 
picture  for  a  long  while.  "It's  in  that  Rough  Riders' 
uniform.  He  must  have  had  it  taken  just  before  he 
went  to  the  war."  She  turned  it  over  and  read  aloud, 
'"Dearest,  from  Phil."  Her  face  twitched  momen 
tarily.  Then  she  set  the  frame  down  again.  "Law 
me,  what  fools  everybody  is  when  they're  real  young  !" 
she  said  musingly.  And  there  was  a  silence  in  the 
little  room  for  half  a  minute. 

Paula  went  to  the  glass  and  readjusted  her  veil  with 
care.  She  sat  down  deliberately,  facing  Lorrie ;  and 
when  she  spoke,  Lorrie  noticed  a  certain  assurance  and 
maturity  in  her  manner  that  had  been  lacking  at  the 
first.  Nobody  would  conceive  of  a  New  York  cor- 
setiere's  establishment  as  a  school  for  the  development 
of  character ;  yet  one  cannot  become  Madame  Clarice, 
head  saleswoman  of  a  fashionable  importing-house, 
without  having  acquired  some  poise,  initiative,  and 
understanding  of  one's  neighbor. 

"Lorrie,"  Paula  said;  "I  suppose  you  think  it's 
funny  my  coming  to  see  you  this  way,  after  every 
thing  that's  happened.  But  I  wanted  to  see  you. 
I  always  liked  you,  Lorrie.  I  liked  you  even  when 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  367 

I  hated  you  —  if  you  know  what  I  mean.     Girls  are 
so  funny." 

Lorrie  had  no  declaration  or  confession  to  make  in 
return ;  she  sat  without  answering,  scarcely  even 
surprised. 

"You  don't  hold  it  up  against  me,  about  Bob,  do 
you?  You  don't  hold  that  against  me?"  said  Paula, 
with  unexpected  earnestness. 

"You  mean  your  being  married  to  him?  Why  no, 
Paula.  How  could  I  dislike  you,  or  feel  any  resent 
ment  against  you  about  that?"  said  Lorrie,  startled 
and  distressed.  "Bob  did  you  a  dreadful  wrong.  The 
first  thing  we  all  thought  of  was  that  he  must  set  it 
right.  It  doesn't  make  any  difference  that  he's  my 
brother.  We  —  I've  never  thought  of  such  a  thing  as 
blaming  you  for  it." 

"Well,  I'd  have  hated  it,  if  I'd  been  in  your  place," 
said  Paula,  honestly.  "Why,  I  even  hated  the  whole 
thing  at  the  time,  but  I  couldn't  help  myself."  She 
leaned  forward  and  spoke  with  emphasis.  "You  know, 
Lorrie,  there's  one  thing  I've  always  wanted  you  to 
know,  only  I  never  had  a  chance  to  tell  you,  and  some 
how  I  couldn't  write  it.  I  never  was  good  at  writing ; 
and  I  was  afraid  I  couldn't  say  it  so  you'd  believe  me. 
But  it's  just  this :  if  I'd  been  left  to  myself,  I'd  never 
have  hooked  on  to  Bob  Gilbert  that  way.  I'd  never 
have  done  it  in  this  wide  world.  It  was  Momma  that 
did  it.  I  told  her  afterwards,  often  and  often,  that 
it  didn't  need  to  have  been  done  at  all.  If  I  could  have 
known  beforehand  that  the  baby  was  going  to  die  — 
you  knew  it  was  born  dead  —  ?" 

Lorrie  uttered  a  sound  of  assent.  She  could  not  have 
spoken  articulately. 

"If  I  could  only  have  known  that  beforehand,  I 
wouldn't  ever  have  hooked  on  to  Bob.  There  wouldn't 
have  been  any  particular  use,  you  see.  Momma  and 
I  could  just  have  gone  away  from  here  and  come  back 


368  VAN   CLEVE: 

again,  and  nobody  would  have  been  one  bit  wiser.  I 
kept  thinking  :  What  am  I  going  to  do  with  that  baby  ? 
And  as  it  turned  out,  I  didn't  need  to  bother  at  all !" 

Lorrie  gazed  at  her,  dumb.  She  was  conscious  with 
horror  of  a  desire  to  laugh,  yet  there  was  a  sob  in  her 
throat.  Oh,  it  was  too  grotesque,  it  was  too  pitiable  ! 
About  Paula's  intention,  there  was  a  crooked  fairness 
immeasurably  pathetic ;  yet  by  every  word  she  said 
Lorrie  felt  all  womankind  to  be  humiliated  and  debased. 

"If  I  could  only  have  known,  I  wouldn't  have  let 
Momma  rope  him  into  getting  married.  But  I  didn't 
know.  I  couldn't  tell  the  baby  was  going  to  die," 
Paula  said  over  again;  "you  believe  me,  don't  you, 
Lorrie?"  she  asked,  in  earnest  apology. 

"Of  course  I  believe  you,  Paula,"  said  Lorrie,  with 
difficulty.  The  tears  stood  in  her  eyes. 

Paula  sat  back  with  a  long  breath.  "I  always 
wanted  you  to  know.  When  the  baby  was  born,  and 
they  found  it  was  dead,  that  was  the  first  thing  I  thought 
of.  I  thought :  There  now,  all  the  fuss  was  for  noth 
ing  !  Well,  I  did  the  best  I  could.  I  went  to  a  lawyer, 
and  got  him  to  tell  me  what  was  the  best  way  to  get  a 
divorce  without  having  any  talk,  or  having  to  tell  any 
thing.  I  had  to  pay  him  a  lot,  too.  So  I  took  his 
advice  and  waited  three  years,  and  then  got  it,  you 
know ;  and  I  told  the  other  lawyers  that  I  wanted  it 
fixed  so  that  your  brother  could  marry  again  if  he 
wanted  to,  same  as  myself.  I  don't  know  whether 
they  did  it  or  not,  but  that's  what  I  told  'em,  anyway. 
And  I  want  to  say,  Lorrie,  that  your  brother's  always 
been  as  nice  a  little  gentleman  as  anybody 'd  want  to 
know.  He's  all  right,  and  I  want  you  to  know  I  think 


so." 


Lorrie  had  a  sensation  as  of  a  person  groping  vainly 
in  some  unlit  labyrinth.  She  had  reached  a  point 
where  she  could  not  follow  the  processes  of  Paula's 
mind ;  at  every  turn  some  stone  wall  of  complete  in- 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND   HIS   FAMILY  369 

comprehensibility  baffled  her.  Surely  any  other  woman 
in  Paula's  position  would  have  either  hated  Bob  or 
loved  him ;  it  was  incredible  that  she  could  pronounce 
him,  with  this  obvious  friendly  conviction,  "all  right." 
It  was  incredible,  but  it  was  so! 

"Now  you  tell  me  something  about  7/owrself,"  said 
Paula,  shifting  her  ground  with  surprising  suddenness. 
"I  thought  you'd  be  married  by  this  time.  Why  didn't 
you,  Lorrie?"  She  spoke  with  energy;  it  had  the 
effect  of  an  accusation,  rather  than  an  inquiry. 

"I  didn't  want  to.  I  don't  want  to,"  Lorrie  answered, 
gathering  herself  together  after  a  moment's  effort. 

The  other  eyed  her  sharply.  "You've  had  some 
more  offers,  haven't  you?"  she  demanded;  "I  guess 
they  don't  come  along  so  thick  as  they  used  to;  but 
you've  held  your  looks  pretty  well,  Lorrie.  I  bet 
you've  had  some  more  offers.  Don't  that  Mr.  Ken- 
drick  want  to  marry  you  still?  He  used  to." 

"Why  — I  — he  — he  - 

"I  knew  he  did,"  said  Paula,  triumphantly.  "Why 
don't  you  take  him?  He's  always  been  crazy  about 
you ;  and  he  must  be  pretty  well  fixed  now.  Of 
course,  it's  all  right  to  keep  a  man  hanging  around 
for  a  while,  so's  he  won't  ever  get  to  feeling  sure 
of  you,"  she  interpolated  liberally;  "but  you  don't 
want  to  take  too  long  about  it.  Men  are  kind  of 
queer,  and  he  might  get  tired  of  waiting,  and  go  off 
to  somebody  else." 

"You  don't  understand.  I  don't  want  to  marry 
any  one.  I  shall  never  marry  any  one.  And  I  will  ask 
you  not  to  talk  to  me  any  more  about  it,  Paula.  You 
know  I  don't  like  you  to,"  said  Lorrie,  fairly  incensed. 
Paula,  however,  looked  at  her  flushed  and  mortified 
face  quite  unmoved. 

"I  guess  you  think  I've  got  my  nerve,"  she  com 
mented  dispassionately.  "Suppose  I  told  you  that 
was  one  of  the  things  I  came  here  to  see  you  about? 

2u 


370  VAN   CLEVE: 

To  ask  about  you  and  Kendrick,  I  mean.     Suppose  I 
told  you  that,  what'd  you  say?" 

"I  would  tell  you  that  it  was  a  great  piece  of  im 
pertinence!"  said  Lorrie,  at  the  end  of  her  self-com 
mand.  She  tried  to  steady  herself.  "It  seems  as  if 
you  can't  be  made  to  understand  that  this  isn't  a  mere 
pretence  with  me.  I  mean  it  when  I  tell  you  I  don't 
like  it.  It's  an  insult  to  Mr.  Kendrick  and  myself 
both.  He  —  "  she  choked  ;  all  at  once  she  found  her 
self  angered  to  the  point  of  tears  on  Van  Cleve's  account. 
He  was  above  being  gabbled  about  this  way ;  above  all 
this  contemptible  gossip  about  getting  tired  of  waiting, 
and  going  off  to  some  one  else  ! 

Paula,  on  the  other  hand,  kept  her  temper  admirably ; 
she  had  always  been  of  an  equable  disposition,  and 
doubtless  the  years  she  had  spent  catering  to  M.  Levi 
Bloch's  customers  had  taught  her  the  value  of  a  surface 
amiability,  at  any  rate.  "  Maybe  it  is  an  impertinence. 
Maybe  who  you  marry  or  don't  marry  is  none  of  my 
business,"  she  said  tranquilly;  and  rose  with  well- 
controlled  movements.  "But  I'll  tell  you  one  thing, 
Lorrie  Gilbert,  if  you're  holding  off  and  meaning  to  die 
an  old  maid  because  of  him  -  '  she  pointed  with  a 
negligent  gesture  of  her  parasol  to  the  photograph  of 
Lome's  dead  lover  which  was  impassively  witnessing 
this  scene,  from  its  stand  on  the  desk  —  "if  it's  because 
of  him,  you're  making  the  mistake  of  your  life.  Would 
he  have  done  it  for  you  ?  Not  much !  Not  much  he 
wouldn't  have  !  Why,  you  were  only  one  of  a  dozen 
with  him.  If  you'd  been  married,  you'd  have  found 
out  about  Phil  Cortwright.  He'd  have  got  tired  of  you 
in  a  month  —  " 

"Paula,    stop!    How    dare  —  how    can  —  how- 
Lorrie's  voice  failed  in  stark  anger.     She  could  not  get 
out  another  word ;    her  whole  frame  trembled.     She 
darted  to  the  desk  and  snatched  the  photograph  up, 
holding  it  against  her  breast  with  a  fierce  movement. 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  371 

She  hardly  knew  what  she  was  doing,  save  defending 
her  most  sacred  memories  against  this  sacrilegious  voice 
and  presence. 

"If  you  scream  out  that  way,  your  brother  or  some 
body  will  hear,"  said  Paula,  disturbed  for  the  first 
time.  She  lowered  her  voice,  glancing  towards  the 
door.  "He  wouldn't  want  me  to  tell  you,  anyhow. 
He  made  me  promise  not  to.  But  what  does  a  promise 
like  that  amount  to?  I  was  in  such  a  fix  I'd  have 
sworn  black  was  white  !"  She  went  closer  to  Lorrie 
and  whispered  something  with  a  sort  of  cold  vehemence. 

Although  she  heard,  Lorrie  for  a  second  did  not 
understand;  the  words  beat  idly  about  her  ears  like 
the  fluttering  of  a  bat's  vrings  at  night.  Paula  spoke 
again ;  and  then  Lorrie  gave  a  wild  and  inarticu 
late  sound  of  denial.  "No,  no!"  -she  gasped;  and 
stared  speechlessly  at  the  other,  her  color  slowly 
fading. 

"It's  the  truth.  My  God,  Lorrie,  don't  look  that 
way !  I  can't  help  it  now.  It's  the  truth"  Paula's 
own  face  showed  ashen-gray  through  all  her  paint; 
the  effort  she  was  making  taxed  all  her  meagre  reserves 
of  character ;  but  she  spoke  with  a  force  of  voice  and 
manner  that  vanquished  doubt. 

"What  call  would  I  have  to  come  here  and  lie  to 
you  ?  It's  the  truth.  I  can  prove  it.  I've  got  letters 
from  him.  I  can  prove  it  if  you  don't  believe  me. 
Or  you  can  go  and  ask  your  brother.  Ask  your  brother, 
and  see  what  he  says.'7 

Lorrie  made  a  negative  motion  with  her  head ;  she 
tried  to  speak  with  lips  that  moved  as  if  of  lead.  The 
picture  slid  out  of  her  hands  to  the  floor.  Paula  seized 
her  arm  with  an  exclamation. 

"Goodness,  Lorrie,  don't  faint,  whatever  you  do! 
For  mercy's  sake,  don't  faint !  Somebody  will  come 
up  here  to  see  what's  the  matter,  and  then  we'll  have  a 
time.  Here,  what  do  you  take  when  you  feel  sick? 


372  VAN  CLEVE: 

Haven't  you  got  any  whiskey?  What's  that  on  the 
wash-stand?  If  it  was  ammonia,  it  might  do.  Gra 
cious,  I  don't  know  what  to  do  !"  She  held  to  Lome's 
elbow,  gazing  about  in  utter  perplexity  and  helpless 
ness.  "I  never  could  do  anything  for  any  person  that 
was  sick.  Would  you  like  some  water?  I  can  get 
some  if  you'll  tell  me  where  it  is,"  she  suggested  un 
certainly,  as  Lorrie  slowly  lapsed  into  a  chair. 

"No.  Never  mind."  Lorrie  put  up  her  hand  to 
her  forehead,  and  felt  the  chilly  moisture  beading 
there,  with  dull  wonder.  She  drew  herself  upright, 
with  an  inconceivable  effort,  clutching  at  the  ledge  of 
the  desk.  Paula  sat  down  opposite,  surveying  her 
uneasily. 

"It's  the  truth-  "  she  was  reiterating,  when  Lorrie 
raised  one  hand  unsteadily. 

"I  believe  you,"  she  said. 

For  an  instant,  Paula  seemed  almost  frightened  at 
the  ease  of  her  victory;  then  she  began  volubly  and 
eagerly.  "I  expect  you  think  it's  funny  about  your 
brother.  Well,  it  is  funny.  Because  he  never  touched 
me.  Bob  Gilbert  never  touched  me,  he  never  had 
anything  to  do  with  me.  I'm  telling  you  God's  truth, 
Lorrie.  It  was  the  other  all  the  time.  I  was  a  fool, 
of  course.  I  thought  it  was  because  of  me  he  was 
coming  here  all  the  time,  making  out  he  was  calling 
on  you.  I  thought  it  was  to  get  a  chance  to  see  me 
outside  the  hotel,  you  know.  And  don't  you  remember 
how  he  used  always  to  take  me  home  ?  I  believed 
everything  he  told  me.  I  guess  you  know  how  that 
was  yourself.  You  believed  him,  too.  We  used  to 
meet  other  places.  I  didn't  know  he  was  engaged  to 
you,  or  thinking  of  it,  till  —  till  after  everything  had 
happened,  and  I--I  was  in  that  awful  fix.  Oh,  I 
was  a  fool  all  right !  I  bet  I  wasn't  the  first  one  he'd 
fooled  either  — 

"Don't!"   said  Lorrie,  faintly.     And  Paula,  looking 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  373 

into  her  face,  was  obediently  silent.     After  some  time, 
Lorriesaid:  "Bob  —  ?" 

"I  never  put  it  on  him.  Lorrie,  I  wouldn't  have 
thought  of  him  —  why  —  why  —  I  just  wouldn't  have 
thought  of  him  !"  cried  out  the  other,  violently  earnest. 
"I  tell  you  Bob  never  came  near  me  that  way,  and  I 
never  said  he  did.  It  was  Momma.  When  I  owned 
up  to  her  what  was  the  matter  with  me,  she  acted  clean 
crazy.  She  kept  tormenting  me  to  know  who  the  man 
was,  and  when  I  wouldn't  tell  her,  she  kept  asking, 
'Is  it  him?'  'Is  it  himf  one  man's  name  after  an 
other,  till  she'd  gone  over  all  the  men  we  knew.  I 
kept  saying:  'No,  it  ain't.  I'm  not  going  to  tell  you 
who  it  was  ! '  And  then  something  in  the  way  I  said 
it  made  her  think  it  was  your  brother,  and  she  got  up 
and  went  off  like  a  flash  to  your  house  and  I  couldn't 
stop  her." 

"She  told  us  it  was  Bob.  We  believed  it,"  said 
Lorrie,  her  face  contracting.  "We  oughtn't  to  have 
been  so  quick  to  believe  it  about  him.  I  can  see  that 
now.  But  afterwards,  why  did  he  —  ?"  She  looked 
at  the  other,  mutely  questioning. 

"That's  what  7  couldn't  make  out,  when  you  wrote 
you'd  got  hold  of  him  down  there  in  Cuba,  and  he  was 
going  to  come  home  with  you  and  marry  me.  I  couldn't 
make  it  out ;  I  couldn't  think  why  he  did  it !  It  looked 
like  he  was  crazy  too  !"  said  Paula,  sincerely;  "I  had 
been  expecting  the  real  truth  would  come  out  when 
you  got  hold  of  your  brother.  At  least  you'd  know  it 
wasn't  him.  But  I  didn't  care  much.  I  was  feeling 
too  awfully.  There  wasn't  any  use  my  telling.  He  - 
the  other  one  —  the  real  one,  you  know  -  '  for  some 
reason  she  shrank  from  pronouncing  Cort Wright's 
name  again  —  "he  wouldn't  come  back  here  and  marry 
me.  I'd  written  to  him.  Oh,  yes,  he  knew.  I'd  told 
him  —  I'd  written  him  over  and  over  again.  But  he 
was  through  with  me,  that  was  all.  He  didn't  care 


374  VAN   CLEVE: 

what  became  of  me.  He  knew  I  wouldn't  ever  tell ; 
he  knew  I'd  be  afraid  to.  And  then  he  got  shot,  so 
that  settled  it,  anyhow.  Then  your  brother  came  home, 
and  your  father  brought  him  down  to  Clarksburg,  that 
little  place  in  Indiana  where  Momma  and  I  were.  I 
was  glad  it  was  just  your  father  and  mother  that  came ; 
I  didn't  want  to  see  you.  They  got  a  minister  and  a 
license  right  off.  Before  we  were  married,  though, 
everybody  went  away  and  left  your  brother  and  I 
alone  together  —  I  suppose  they  thought  we'd  want  to 
do  some  love  making,"  said  Paula,  dully  ironical; 
"  any  way  they  left  us  alone  in  the  room.  I  said  to 
him:  'What  are  you  doing  it  for?'  Just  like  that. 
I  couldn't  think  of  anything  else.  He  knew  what  I 
meant,  of  course.  He  said :  '  I  found  out  about  you 
and  Cort.  It  was  an  accident  —  I  didn't  mean  to  — 
but  I  found  out.  I've  got  all  those  letters  you  wrote 
him.  Here  they  are.  You  better  burn  'em  up/ 
Then  I  said  again  :  '  But  what  are  you  doing  it  for  ? ' 
He  said :  '  I  don't  want  my  sister  ever  to  know.  It 
would  kill  Lorrie.  You  must  promise  me  you  won't 
ever  tell  Lorrie.'  He  said  more,  but  I  forget  what  it 
was  now ;  it  was  about  the  same,  I  guess.  He  was 
afraid  for  you  to  know.  So  I  promised  him,  and  we 
were  married." 

Lorrie  heard  her  with  a  sharp  pang  of  contrition. 
She  really  had  no  cause  for  self-reproach ;  her  affection 
for  her  brother,  her  kindness,  her  forbearance,  had  been 
as  constant  as  the  sunlight.  And  about  Bob's  own 
self-sacrifice  there  had  been  nothing  commendable, 
nothing  heroic ;  it  was  merely  foolish,  Lorrie  recog 
nized  that.  Nevertheless  it  was  with  an  aching  regret 
that  she  cast  back  over  all  the  years  that  they  had 
condemned  and  misjudged  him.  "Oh,  poor,  poor  Bob  ! 
I  wouldn't  have  died  of  it.  People  don't  die  of  things 
like  that,"  she  said.  The  idol  she  had  served  and 
cherished  lay  in  fragments  at  her  feet;  but,  strangely 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  375 

enough,  Lorrie  faced  the  spectacle  with  far  less  pain 
than  that  with  which  she  thought  of  Robert,  and  his 
generous  folly.  How  could  they  ever  have  believed  it 
of  him  in  the  first  place?  It  was  clean  out  of  his 
character,  couldn't  they  have  seen  that?  she  asked 
herself  in  futile  sorrow  and  impatience.  She  wanted 
to  go  and  get  down  on  her  knees  and  beg  Bob  to  for 
give  her. 

"Well,  anyway,  he  didn't  want  you  to  know,"  Paula 
said,  answering  her  last  words.  "After  we  were 
married  he  stayed  around  about  a  month,  just  for  the 
looks  of  the  thing,  you  know.  But  nobody  ever  sus 
pected,  even  Momma,  though  she  was  right  with  us. 
I  guess  you  remember  about  his  being  taken  with  his 
lungs,  and  having  to  go  to  Colorado  —  you  remember 
when  that  was  ?  We've  scarcely  ever  seen  each  other 
since.  But  he  was  always  a  perfect  gentleman,  Lorrie. 
He  never  said  another  word  to  me  about  him,  nor  threw 
it  at  me  what  I'd  done,  nor  anything,  not  even  when  he 
was  drunk." 

There  was  another  long  silence.  Paula  began  arrang 
ing  her  gloves  and  veil  preparatory  to  departure,  and 
at  last  rose,  shaking  out  her  skirts  with  careful,  preen 
ing  fingers. 

"Well,  that's  all.  I  guess  I'll  be  moving,"  she  an 
nounced  ;  and  as  Lorrie  did  not  speak,  paused,  looking 
at  her  with  renewed  uneasiness  and  suspicion.  "Of 
course  I  haven't  got  any  of  the  letters  he  wrote  with 
me.  I  don't  take  'em  around  when  I'm  on  the  road. 
But  I  can  send  and  have  'em  sent  to  you.  They're 
all  in  my  desk  in  the  flat  in  N'Yawk.  I'll  send  for  'em 
if  you  don't  believe  me,  Lorrie." 

"I  don't  want  to  see  them,"  said  Lorrie. 

"You  really  don't  need  to,  anyhow.  You  can  just 
ask  your  brother,"  Paula  advised  practically;  "it 
can't  harm  him  now  to  know  that  you  know  all  about 
it.  He's  too  far  gone.  When  I  saw  him  the  other 


376  VAN   CLEVE: 

day,  I  don't  know  how  it  was,  but  it  just  came  over 
me  that  I  ought  to  tell  you.  He's  going  to  die,  and 
I  couldn't  help  hating  to  think  of  Bob  Gilbert  dying 
and  his  folks  still  thinking  that  about  him.  I  don't 
know  why,  but  I  just  couldn't  bear  the  idea,"  said 
Paula,  stopping  a  moment  to  consider  this  phenomenon. 
"And  besides,  I  heard  you  weren't  married  yet,  and  I 
thought  to  myself,  '  I  bet  I  know  why ! '  And  you 
know,  Lorrie,  it  did  seem  to  me  too  silly  for  you  to 
give  up  that  way,  because  of  him.  It  seemed  like  you 
ought  to  know  about  him.  Well,  good-by.  Oh,  my, 
excuse  me  !  I've  stepped  right  square  on  it !  Is  the 
frame  broken  ?  Why,  isn't  that  awful !  Do  excuse 
me  !  I  didn't  see  it." 

"It's  no  matter,"  Lorrie  said  in  an  expressionless 
voice.  After  Paula  had  gone,  she  went  with  slow 
steps  back  to  the  room  and  picked  up  the  broken 
photograph  and  the  glass  which  the  other's  high  French 
heel  had  ground  to  crumbs,  and  sat  awhile,  thinking  of 
her  destroyed  illusions  with  a  kind  of  compassion. 
Suddenly  she  felt  that  what  she  had  just  heard  was  no 
revelation ;  it  was  something  she  had  always  dimly 
known  and  tried  with  a  pitiful  defiance  to  keep  herself 
from  knowing.  She  viewed  herself  in  a  strange  detach 
ment.  That  girl  who  had  been  engaged  to  Philip 
Cortwright,  that  poor  thing  who  had  had  to  learn  of 
his  death  in  so  cruel  a  way,  who  had  kept  faith  with 
him  all  these  years,  who  had  resolutely  turned  away 
from  other  devotion  —  that  woman  had  loved  her 
hero ;  but  she  had  never  trusted  him.  There  was  a 
side  of  his  life,  a  side  of  his  character,  she  had  steadily 
refused  to  see ;  yet  she  knew  it  was  there  all  the  time 
—  oh,  she  knew  it !  Lorrie  remembered  with  ineffable 
shrinking,  having  recited  to  herself  the  common,  petty 
bit  of  feminine  cynicism  that  all  men  — .  How  could 
she  ever  have  pretended  to  believe  that  ?  Why,  their 
poor  Bob,  poor,  dull,  weak,  self-indulgent,  characterless 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  377 

Bob,  was  too  strong,  too  decent  for  that!  Hot  humilia 
tion  suffused  her  anew.  She  got  up  with  a  violent 
movement,  and  went  to  her  desk. 

A  while  later,  Mrs.  Gilbert  came  up-stairs  to  answer 
the  telephone;  she  paused  at  the  threshold,  and, 
glancing  in,  exclaimed  aloud:  "Lorrie!  You're  not 
building  a  fire?  It's  not  cool  enough  yet  for  that!" 

"No,  I'm  only  burning  some  things,"  said  Lorrie. 
She  was  sitting  before  the  hearth  with  her  chin  in  her 
hand,  staring  at  the  dying  embers.  Mrs.  Gilbert  came 
farther  in,  eying  the  dismantled  desk. 

"Old  letters?"  she  queried  innocently.  "It  looks 
as  if  you  had  rummaged  all  the  drawers,  and  cleaned 
out  everything.  I  thought  I  smelled  smoke.  Photo 
graphs  are  slow  to  burn,  aren't  they?  Why,  your 
mantelpiece  is  almost  bare  !  You've  changed  every 
thing  —  no,  here's  Van  Cleve's  picture  in  the  same 
place.  You're  not  going  to  burn  that  up,  I  hope, 
Lorrie." 

Lorrie  looked  up.  Van  Cleve's  photograph,  one  of 
the  few  he  had  ever  had  taken,  had  always  stood  in 
the  middle  of  her  mantelshelf,  and  stood  there  now, 
its  harsh  features  and  direct  gaze  facing  her  —  a  homely 
picture  of  a  homely  man.  Lome's  eyes  suddenly 
filled  up  ;  to  her  mother's  surprise  and  alarm,  she  began 
to  sob  heavily.  "No,  no,  I  sha'n't  change  Van  Cleve, 
Mother  —  nobody  can  change  Van  Cleve.  He'll  al 
ways  be  the  same  —  always,  always." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  END  OF  THE  TETHER 

OF  all  the  family,  Robert  himself  was  the  least 
moved  when  it  was  made  known  that  Paula  had  been 
there  at  the  house,  and  the  object  of  her  visit  revealed. 
He  was  surprised  and  disconcerted,  and  swore  once  or 
twice  amiably,  under  his  breath.  "Well,  that's  the 
last  thing  in  the  world  I  would  have  expected  !  What 
the  mischief  did  she  want  to  do  that  for  ?  Oh,  yes  — 
yes,  it's  true.  She's  gone  to  work  and  told  the  whole 
thing,  so  there's  no  use  my  talking.  But  what  possessed 
her?"  he  ejaculated  in  futile  inquiry.  His  strongest 
emotion  appeared  to  be  a  vexed  embarrassment,  which, 
however,  gave  away  instantly  to  concern  on  seeing  his 
mother's  face. 

"Why,  Moms,  why,  what's  the  matter?  Don't  cry 
that  way!"  he  said  in  distress;  "you  couldn't  help 
believing  it.  What  else  could  you  think  ?  Wronged  ? 
Wronged  who  ?  Wronged  me  f  Bosh,  you  didn't  do 
anything  of  the  kind  !  It's  all  right.  It  didn't  make 
any  difference  about  me.  I'm  a  little  glad,  now  it's 
all  over,  to  have  you  know  that  I'm  not  that  sort  of  a 
fellow.  I  wouldn't  ever  have  treated  any  girl  that 
way,"  said  Bob,  earnestly,  apparently  thinking  it 
necessary  to  clear  up  this  point.  "I  —  why,  I  just 
wouldn't  have  wanted  to,  you  know.  I  wouldn't  ever 
have  wanted  to,  that's  all !  I  hoped  it  would  never  be 
known  how  it  really  was,  on  Lome's  account.  Seemed 
to  me  that  was  the  least  I  could  do  for  Lorrie.  And  I 
always  liked  Cort.  And  he  was  dead,  you  know  — 
and  you  all  thought  it  was  me,  anyhow  - 

378 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  379 

"Don't,  Bob  !  And  don't  say  anything  more  about 
that  man!"  Mrs.  Gilbert  cried  indignantly  through 
her  tears.  "He  was  the  one  that  took  you  away  from 
us  in  the  beginning,  and  —  and  led  you  into  doing 
things  you  wouldn't  have  done  by  yourself.  You 
know  he  did.  He  was  a  bad  man,  Bob,  I  always  felt 
he  was,  only  Lorrie  cared  for  him,  and  so  — .  But  he 
was  a  bad  man  — " 

"I  liked  him,  anyhow,  Mother.  You  mustn't  talk 
to  me  about  Cort,"  Bob  interposed  with  so  unwonted  a 
gravity  that  she  broke  off,  rather  frightened.  All  the 
doctor's  cautions  crowded  into  her  mind. 

"I  don't  mean  —  that  is,  I  -  "  she  stammered,  with 
a  sob. 

"I  know,"  said  Bob,  and  took  her  hand  affectionately 
into  his  own  thin,  hot  grasp.  "You  don't  understand 
how  men  are  sometimes,  I  believe.  Cort  and  I  were 
pretty  good  friends,  that's  all.  I  think  perhaps 
women  aren't  ever  friends  the  same  way  men  are.  A 
fellow  that  knows  all  about  you,  and  likes  you  in  spite 
of  it  —  that's  a  friend.  Like  old  Van,  you  know.  He's 
the  best  friend  I've  got — and  he  knows  me  like  a  book  ! " 

"Why,  of  course,  Bob  —  of  course  Van  Cleve  likes 
you  !  But  that's  different.  It's  not  the  same  thing 
at  all!"  cried  his  mother,  puzzled,  and  resentful  of 
this  classification;  "you  talk  about  yourself  as  if  you 
were  —  as  if  you  were  — 

"No  good?  Well,  I'm  not!"  Bob  said  easily; 
"at  least  I  haven't  been  up  to  now.  But  thank  the 
Lord  it  isn't  too  late !  This  last  attack  has  been  a 
good  lesson  to  me,  Moms.  I  mean  to  brace  up.  When 
I  get  well  and  get  out  of  this  bed,  you're  all  going  to 
see  a  big  change  in  me.  There's  room  for  it.  I'm 
going  to  brace  up  and  work  and  —  and  make  something 
of  myself !"  The  face  he  turned  towards  her  was  full 
of  enthusiasm ;  he  looked,  for  a  fugitive  instant,  like  a 
boy  again. 


380  VAN  CLEVE: 

"Lorrie  says  Van  Cleve  ought  to  know  about  this, 
too,"  Mrs.  Gilbert  said  after  a  while;  "she  wanted 
you  to  tell  him." 

"Van?  Oh,  I  don't  know.  He  doesn't  mind,  you 
know.  I  don't  see  why  he  need  be  told,"  said  Robert 
with  indifference ;  "however,  if  Lorrie  wants  me  to  — 
And  after  all,  Van  took  a  deal  of  trouble  going  down 
there  to  Cuba  to  get  me,  and  I  suppose  he  has  a  right 
to  know  about  it ;  and  it  can't  make  any  difference  to 
Paula  now." 

It  happened  that  when  Van  Cleve  came  up  that 
evening,  according  to  custom,  he  was  quite  excited  — 
for  him  —  over  some  news  of  his  own,  and  launched 
into  it  with  astonishing  loquacity  almost  the  minute  he 
was  ushered  into  the  room,  amongst  the  family,  with 
out  noticing  the  silence  and  the  slight  constraint  that 
hung  over  them  all.  "What  do  you  think  ?  The  most 
remarkable  event  of  the  present  century  has  just  taken 
place!"  he  proclaimed  with  actual  joviality;  his 
crows'  feet  all  puckered  together;  the  line  at  the 
corner  of  his  mouth  curved ;  all  his  harsh,  tired  face 
relaxed  as  he  looked  around  and  felt  their  kind  expec 
tancy.  They  were  the  only  people  he  knew  who  took 
a  real  and  selfless  interest  in  him  —  or  so  Van  thought ; 
he  did  not  except  his  own  family.  He  had  never  had 
much  talent  for  making  friends,  nor,  as  he  considered, 
enough  time ;  he  had  always  been  so  busy.  But  the 
Gilberts  understood ;  and  his  lean-nurtured  heart 
fairly  sunned  itself  in  their  affection.  The  men  who 
called  him  a  skinflint  —  and  he  may  have  become 
something  of  a  skinflint  by  this  time  —  would  have 
been  confounded  could  they  have  seen  him  in  his 
present  environment. 

"Did  I  ever  say  anything  to  any  of  you  about  that 
old  farm  my  grandfather  owned  up  in  Union  County  ? 
Bob,  I've  talked  to  you  about  it,  haven't  I?  I've  a 
kind  of  hazy  recollection  of  having  mentioned  it  — 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  381 

probably  in  June  or  December  when  the  taxes  came 
round,"  he  threw  in  with  a  chuckle.  "It's  always  been 
perfectly  worthless.  Grandpop  Van  Cleve  didn't  make 
many  mistakes,  and  I've  often  thought  the  old  gentle 
man  must  have  had  to  take  some  man's  property  on  a 
bad  debt  —  that  would  have  accounted  for  the  farm. 
Didn't  I  ever  speak  of  it  before?" 

But  nobody  could  remember  having  heard  a  word 
about  the  Union  County  farm,  so  Van  Cleve  went  on : 
"It's  had  a  great  many  vicissitudes  —  close  calls,  you 
might  say.  Once  we  were  on  the  verge  of  selling  it, 
and  I  was  to  have  gone  to  Eureka  College  with  the 
money.  I  wanted  to  go  with  you,  don't  you  remember, 
Bob  ?  Good  gracious,  that  must  be  nearly  twenty 
years  ago  !  Anyhow,  the  lawyers  objected  to  some 
thing  about  the  title,  and  we  never  did  sell  it.  And 
here  the  other  day,  they  struck  gas  on  the  farm  next 
to  it,  not  thirty  yards  away  from  our  line !  I've  got 
two  offers  already  for  the  land  at  prices  that  would 
raise  your  hair.  I  have  to  go  up  there  and  see  about 
it ;  looks  to  me  as  if  the  entire  community  had  gone 
insane  on  the  subject  of  natural  gas." 

"Hooray  !"  cried  Bob,  weakly ;  and,  in  lieu  of  a  hat, 
seized  and  tossed  into  the  air  a  copy  of  the  Record- 
World  which  was  lying  handy;  "Van  Cleve,  you're 
going  to  be  a  millionnaire  !  I  see  it  coming  !  Remem 
ber  the  humble  friends  of  your  youth,  and  give  us  a 
ride  in  your  private  car  once  in  a  while  !"  Everybody 
was  unaffectedly  delighted.  They  liked  to  figure  Van 
Cleve  on  the  high  road  to  prosperity  after  all  his  hard 
years. 

"Well,  I  haven't  got  there  yet,  you  know.  You 
don't  want  to  bank  too  much  on  anything,"  he  warned, 
as  the  felicitations  subsided ;  and  so  characteristic  was 
this  remark  that  Bob  burst  out  laughing  again,  in  pure 
enjoyment.  Van  Cleve  shook  his  head  at  him  good- 
naturedly.  "That's  all  right,  my  son.  You  can 


382  VAN   CLEVE: 

laugh,  but  nobody  ever  got  something  for  nothing,  yet. 
Everybody  has  to  pay  for  his  good  luck  one  way  or 
another/7  he  observed  sagely.  "But  this  rather  re 
verses  the  usual  story,  doesn't  it  ?  You're  constantly 
hearing  from  the  man  who  could  have  bought  Calumet- 
and-Hecla  for  a  song  back  in  'eighty-one ;  or  the  other 
man  that  gave  Carnegie  a  tip  about  steel ;  or  the 
fellow  that  told  John  D.  Rockefeller  coal-oil  was  a  good 
thing.  If  all  of  the  men  that  have  missed  their  chances 
that  way  were  laid  out  end  to  end,  they'd  make  a 
band  that  would  go  seven  times  around  the  earth  and 
lap  over  a  third  of  the  way  !  I'm  one  of  'em  myself. 
Where's  Lorrie  ?  Has  she  gone  out  ?  I  wanted  to  tell 
her." 

Lorrie  had  a  headache  —  she  was  not  well  —  she 
had  been  very  much  upset  by  something  that  had 
happened  that  morning,  he  was  told ;  poor  Van's  face 
fell  noticeably  at  this  news.  And  he  was  quite  un 
conscious  of  the  unnatural  awkwardness  with  which 
the  Professor  and  Mrs.  Gilbert  got  themselves  out  of 
the  room ;  suddenly  he  found  himself  alone  with  Bob, 
who  looked  at  him  apprehensively  from  the  sofa. 

"You  would  never  guess  who  was  here  to-day, 
Van,"  he  said  hesitatingly.  "It  was  —  well,  it  was 
Paula." 

' '  Paula  ?  You  don't  mean — ?  Paula !  Is  she  here  ? 
Here  at  the  house?" 

"No,  she's  at  the  hotel  still.  But  she  came  out  this 
morning." 

"To  see  you?"  Van  Cleve  asked  rather  blankly. 
His  first  thought  was  that  Bob's  wife  must  have 
wanted  to  patch  up  a  reconciliation  with  him,  before 
he  died ;  and  he  wondered  uncomfortably  if  he  himself 
would  be  obliged  to  meet  her. 

"No,  no,  I  didn't  see  her.  She  didn't  come  to  see 
me.  It  was  Lorrie  she  wanted  to  see.  She  wanted  to 
tell  Lorrie  something — "  Bob  went  on  with  the  tale 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  383 

haltingly  and  not  very  clearly,  as  could  be  judged  by 
the  perplexity  in  his  friend's  eyes.  Van  did  not  in 
terrupt  ;  he  had  the  gift  of  not  interrupting ;  but  at 
one  stage  of  the  narrative,  as  Bob  paused,  he  said  not 
without  satisfaction :  — 

"I  always  thought  that  girl  was  a  bad  lot.  Now 
she  tells  you  the  child  wasn't  yours  at  all,  hey?  If 
you'll  remember,  Bob,  I  suggested  that  to  you  once, 
but  you  wouldn't  pay  any  attention  to  me.  I  daresay 
she  had  no  idea  who  its  father  was  — ' 

"No,  no,  Van  Cleve  !  It  wasn't  that!  Don't  think 
that!"  Bob  cried  out  with  tragic  earnestness,  raising 
himself  painfully.  "You've  got  it  all  wrong.  Don't 
think  a  thing  like  that.  You  —  she  —  I  -  'he  began 
to  cough  pitifully. 

"Here,  lie  down.  You  know  the  doctor  said  you 
weren't  to  bear  your  weight  on  that  side,"  said  Van 
Cleve,  alarmed.  "Lie  down,  Bob.  Where's  that  stuff 
you  take  ?  I'll  get  you  some  of  it.  Never  mind,  you 
can  tell  me  the  rest  after  a  \vhile.  You  keep  quiet  now, 
old  man." 

Bob  dropped  back  on  the  pillows,  exhausted,  eying 
the  other  with  affection  and  a  certain  wonder  and  con 
fusion  of  mind,  as  Van  Cleve  carefully  measured  out 
and  administered  the  medicine,  using  his  big,  strong, 
steady  hands  with  surprising  delicacy. 

"I  can't  always  make  you  out,  Van,"  he  said. 
"You're  so  hard  sometimes  I  feel  as  if  talking  to  you 
was  like  dashing  myself  against  a  rock.  And  then  again 
you're  —  you're  so  solidly  good!  I  can't  make  you 
out." 

"Oh,  I  think  I  must  be  about  like  everybody  else," 
said  Van  Cleve,  embarrassed.  "You'd  better  not  try 
to  talk  any  more  to-night.  It'll  keep  till  next  time, 
won't  it?" 

But  no,  it  wouldn't  keep,  Bob  strenuously  assured 
him,  so  Van  Cleve,  anxious  not  to  let  him  excite  him- 


384  VAN   CLEVE: 

self  further,  sat  down  again  with  folded  arms,  and  at 
last  heard  the  whole.  At  the  end  he  shifted  his  atti 
tude  slightly,  staring  broodingly  on  the  floor.  After 
a  while,  he  asked  :  "How  did  Lorrie  —  ?  Is  that  why 
she  —  ?  I  mean,  is  that  what  has  made  her  sick  ?  " 

"  She  isn't  really  sick.  She's  just  —  well,  all  to  pieces. 
And  no  wonder  !  It's  terribly  hard  for  her.  Mother 
says  she's  burned  up  all  his  letters  and  everything. 
It's  terribly  hard." 

"It's  been  hard  for  Lorrie  for  ten  years,"  said  Van 
Cleve.  "He  died  once,  and  as  if  that  were  not  hard 
enough,  he's  been  killed  all  over  again.  Once  was 
enough,  I  think.  She  might  have  been  spared  the  ten 
years,  and  this  thing  at  the  end  of  them." 

Bob  explained  feverishly.  "If  I  could  have  had  any 
notion  that  Paula  would  come  here,  and  let  it  all  out  this 
way,  I'd  have  stopped  her.  I'd  have  tried  to  stop  her, 
anyway.  But  I  —  why,  I  didn't  dream  of  such  a  thing  ! 
it  never  came  into  my  head  that  she- 

"I  wasn't  thinking  about  her.  I'm  not  talking  about 
anything  she's  done,"  Van  Cleve  said. 

He  spoke  in  such  a  tone  that  Robert,  looking  into  his 
overcast  face,  began  to  plead  with  a  childish  fearful- 
ness.  "Look  here,  you  —  you  don't  think  I  did  wrong, 
do  you,  Van  Cleve  ?  After  all,  it  was  —  it  was  worse 
for  me  than  for  anybody  else.  I  was  going  to  tell  you 
the  whole  truth  down  there  at  Siboney,  on  the  boat 
that  morning,  you  know.  I  had  just  found  it  out  from 
those  letters  I  took  off  of  poor  Cort's  dead  body.  I  was 
starting  to  tell  you  when  it  came  out  that  you  and  all 
the  rest,  Lorrie  and  everybody,  thought  —  thought  / 
was  the  one.  I  didn't  know  why  Paula  fastened  it 
on  me.  I  never  had  anything  to  do  with  her  that  way 
His  emaciated  face  flushed  and  paled  distress 
ingly.  "I've  never  been  that  sort.  No  credit  to  me  — 
I'm  just  not  that  sort.  But  none  of  you  realized  that ; 
you  couldn't  have  been  expected  to.  And  all  at  once 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  385 

I  saw  that  I  —  well,  that  I  could  take  the  blame  per 
fectly  well  - 

"I  don't  see  why  you  should.  I  don't  see  what  good 
you  expected  to  do  by  that.  And  what  good  have  you 
done?"  said  Van  Cleve,  bitterly.  "What  good  have 
you  done?" 

Bob  looked  at  him  in  helpless  appeal.  "I  wanted 
to  make  it  easier  for  Lorrie,  Van.  How  could  /  tell  it 
was  all  going  to  turn  out  this  way  ?  I  wanted  to  make 
it  easier  for  her.  Why,  don't  you  remember,  you  your 
self  started  in  and  gave  me  the  most  awful  roast  about 
how  I'd  treated  her,  and  what  a  care  and  a  trial  I'd 
been  to  her  for  years  —  and  you  were  all  right,  too, 
Van ;  you  didn't  put  it  a  bit  too  strong,  and  every  word 
you  said  was  the  flat  truth,  I  knew  that  -  '  he  in 
terrupted  himself  in  eager  acknowledgment.  "It  just 
came  to  me  then  that  I  could  make  it  up  to  her  a  little. 
That's  why  I  did  it.  I  wanted  to  save  Lorrie  all  I 
could.  Seemed  to  me  that  was  the  least  I  could  do  !" 

"To  save  her  from  what?"  said  Van  Cleve.  He 
got  up  and  walked  twice  or  thrice  up  and  down  the  room, 
while  the  other's  troubled  gaze  followed  him.  "Do 
you  know  you've  let  Lorrie  waste  ten  years  of  her  life  - 
ten  of  her  best  years  ?  For  what  ?  For  nothing ! 
For  the  sake  of  that  cheap  seducer  —  that  flimsy,  sen 
sual  -  "he  caught  sight  of  Bob's  face,  and  stopped  - 
"Very  well,  I  won't  say  anything  more  about  him,  only 
that  you  yourself  must  know  in  your  heart,  Bob,  that 
he  wasn't  worth  a  minute  of  it.  She'd  have  wasted  all 
the  rest  of  her  time,  if  this  Jameson  woman  hadn't  come 
here,  and  let  her  know  the  truth  about  him  at  last.  You 
call  that  saving  Lorrie?  I  don't,  Bob." 

"I  know  —  I  know  —  I've  sometimes  felt  it  wasn't 
all  right,  somehow  —  when  I  saw  the  way  she  felt," 
said  Bob,  tremulously.  "But  I  want  to  ask  you  one 
thing,  Van  Cleve ;  I  want  to  ask  you  what  you'd  have 
done  in  my  place  ?  Would  you  have  told  her  ?  " 
2c 


386  VAN   CLEVE: 

"Oh,  me!  It's  no  question  of  what  I'd  have  done 
or  not  have  done,"  said  Van  Cleve,  fiercely  impatient. 
"It  would  have  been  an  altogether  different  position  for 
me,  anyhow." 

"But  would  you?    You  might  have  found  it  out  - 
anybody  might  have  found  it  out,"  persisted  the  other. 
"If  you  had  known,  would  you  have  told  Lorrie  about 
Cort?     Would  you,  Van?" 

"Why  —  I  —  I  —  well,  no,  then,  I  wouldn't  have  !" 
Van  shouted  in  a  kind  of  angry  confusion,  striding  about 
the  room,  avoiding  his  friend's  eye.  "No,  I  wouldn't ; 
of  course  I  wouldn't !  Think  I'm  going  to  run  around 
gabbling  stories  about  a  dead  man  ?  And  to  Lorrie ! 
I  tell  you  my  position's  different — entirely  different  - 

"But  you  wouldn't  have  told  her,  either,"  interrupted 
Robert,  without  triumph,  however.  He  fumbled 
weakly  with  the  fringe  of  the  counterpane  for  a  moment, 
then,  with  a  quick  movement,  turned  towards  the  other 
a  face  of  wistful  affection,  penitence,  earnest  desire  to 
make  all  clear.  "You  see  how  it  was  with  me,  then, 
Van.  I  thought  you'd  understand.  And  I  liked  Cort. 
That  was  another  reason.  You  know  I  didn't  mean 
any  wrong ;  I  never  thought  of  it  harming  anybody 
but  myself.  It  wasn't  until  after  the  whole  business 
was  done  and  settled  and  couldn't  be  undone,  that  I 
began  to  be  afraid  I'd  made  a  mistake  after  all.  I  mean 
when  I  —  when  I  saw  how  it  was  going  to  —  affect 
you,  you  know.  I've  always  felt  badly  about  that, 
Van  Cleve.  I've  always  been  hoping  that  Lorrie  would 
get  over  it,"  said  poor  Bob,  who  himself  had  never  had 
the  least  trouble  in  "getting  over"  anything,  whose 
memory  was  as  water  for  other  people's  sins,  errors, 
and  misfortunes  as  well  as  for  his  own.  "I've  always 
counted  on  her  getting  over  it,  and  then  she  —  you 
and  she  - 

"I  wasn't  thinking  about  that,"  said  Van  Cleve, 
still  angrily.  Even  as  he  uttered  the  words,  he  became 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS  FAMILY  387 

suddenly  aware  that  that  was  precisely  what  he  had 
been  thinking  about  in  some  inner  recess  of  his  mind. 
A  dark  color  came  into  his  face ;  he  went  and  sat  down 
by  Bob's  cot  again.  "I  suppose  that  was  really  at  the 
bottom  of  what  I  said  just  now,"  he  confessed,  humil 
iated.  "Not  that  Lorrie  would  marry  me,  anyhow, 
you  know,  Bob.  But  I  might  have  had  a  better  chance. 
I  didn't  mean  to  be  rough  with  you.  I  know  you  were 
doing  it  for  the  best.  I  think  now  we  ought  all  to  be 
ashamed  of  ourselves  because  we  were  so  ready  to  be 
deceived  —  so  ready  to  think  evil  of  you.  It  must 
have  been  hard  for  you  to  stand.  There  are  people 
that  don't  think  any  too  well  of  me;  I  know  how  you 
must  have  felt." 

"No,  you  don't,  because  you  aren't  like  me,"  Bob 
retorted  with  a  curious  and  touching  lightness,  in  open 
relief  at  his  friend's  change  of  tone.  ' l  It  never  did  make 
much  difference  to  me,  Van  —  just  once  in  a  while, 
you  know.  It  would  have  been  hard  for  a  man  like 
you,  I  can  understand  that.  But  me  —  why,  it  didn't 
matter  so  much.  Sometimes  I've  thought  I'd  like  to 
have  all  of  you  know  how  it  really  happened.  But  you 
see  I'd  given  all  of, Paula's  letters  back  to  her,  so  I 
couldn't  prove  anything.  And  I  wasn't  going  to  call 
on  her  for  proof ;  and  none  of  you  would  have  believed 
me,  if  I'd  sworn  to  the  truth  up  and  down.  So  I  had 
to  let  things  go  as  they  were." 

He  offered  this  explanation  with  a  simplicity  that  cut 
the  other  to  the  quick ;  yet  Van  Cleve  knew  that  none 
of  them  had  ever  been  consciously  unjust  or  unmerciful 
to  Bob.  They  had  all  tried  their  best  to  do  what  was 
right,  and  the  result  was  a  miserable  muddle  wherein 
everybody  was  somehow  more  or  less  in  the  wrong ! 
"Why,  I  would  have  believed  you,  Bob,"  he  said  hus 
kily;  "we  would  all  have  believed  you.  Your  bare 
word  would  have  been  enough  at  any  tune.  What  put 
that  notion  into  your  head?" 


388  VAN   CLEVE: 

"  Would  you,  Van  Cleve  ?"  said  Bob,  pleased ;  "well, 
that's  good  to  hear.  People  generally  haven't  got  much 
use  for  me,  you  know,  and  what  I  say  doesn't  go  very 
far  with  them." 

During  the  succeeding  weeks  Bob's  case  progressed, 
as  had  been  foretold,  with  faint  rallies,  alternating  with 
imperceptibly  accelerated  declines.  The  family  could 
not  hide  it  from  themselves;  yet  Mrs.  Gilbert  still 
worked  away  at  coverlids  and  bed-shoes  and  little  sick 
room  conveniences;  they  still  talked  of  next  spring, 
next  month,  next  week.  It  was  habit.  Robert  had 
been  a  care  to  them  so  long,  in  one  way  or  another, 
that  they  could  not  envisage  a  future  without  him,  a 
time  when  he  would  no  longer  be  on  their  minds  to  be 
loved,  excused,  petted,  shielded.  He  himself  was  never 
plaintive,  never  fretful ;  and  the  end,  when  it  came,  was 
mercifully  quick  and  quiet.  Van  Cleve,  at  his  office, 
was  called  to  the  telephone  one  morning,  towards  the 
end  of  the  winter ;  he  had  been  at  the  house  the  night 
before  and  left  Bob  feeling  better  than  for  days,  quite 
gay,  and  laughing  over  the  comic  papers  some  one  had 
sent  him.  It  was  an  instant  before  Van  recognized  Lor- 
rie's  voice,  begging  him  to  come  out,  in  a  hurried  and 
frightened  tone ;  Bob  had  had  a  good  night ;  but  some 
how  they  did  not  think  he  looked  so  well  this  morning ; 
he  had  been  wishing  Van  Cleve  would  come ;  he  seemed 
not  to  realize  that  it  was  daytime  —  early  in  the  day ; 
they  had  sent  for  the  doctor  — 

Van  Cleve  got  into  his  overcoat  and  hurried  out; 
the  winter  day  was  dingily  thawing,  with  a  wan  sky 
overhead,  and  the  streets  in  a  discolored  slush.  Van 
met  the  doctor  picking  his  way  down  the  Gilberts'  un- 
swept  steps,  between  the  treacherous,  sliding  lumps  of 
ice  and  snow ;  they  spoke  together  for  a  moment. 
Lorrie  was  waiting,  and  drew  him  into  the  hall.  She 
was  not  crying,  but  her  face  trembled  as  she  began  to 


HIS   FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  389 

speak  in  a  guarded  voice.  "The  doctor  told  you, 
didn't  he  ?  He  has  just  seen  Bob  —  he  says  it  may  be 
any  time  now.  It's  so  strange  —  we  thought  Bob  was 
better  for  a  little  while  this  morning.  And  then  all  at 
once  —  no,  he's  quite  right  in  his  head  ;  he'll  know  you." 

He  followed  her  into  the  sick-room.  Bob  was  lying 
there,  propped  on  his  pillows  in  the  bright,  fresh,  pretty 
place  they  managed  always  to  keep  about  him,  looking 
somehow  a  little  different  from  the  way  he  had  last 
night,  as  Van  swiftly  noted,  but  certainly  no  worse. 
Van  Cleve  went  up  to  the  bed,  where  the  father  and 
mother  drew  aside  for  him,  and  sat  down  close  beside 
it,  taking  the  other's  hand ;  he  said  with  that  false 
heartiness  that  seems  as  if  it  never  should  deceive  any 
body,  least  of  all  the  person  for  whom  it  is  intended  — 
Van  said:  "  Well,  Bob,  how  are  you  coming  on,  hey  ?  " 

Bob  raised  his  head  a  little  and  looked  at  him  with 
his  old,  sweet,  boyish  smile,  confiding  and  gay.  "Why, 
I'm  about  even,  Van,  old  fellow  ! "  he  said.  His  head 
dropped  back  with  so  gentle  and  natural  a  movement, 
it  was  a  full  minute  before  any  of  them  saw  that  he  was 
dead. 


CHAPTER   IX 
WHICH  is  IN  THE  NATURE  OF  A  FOOTNOTE 

IT  would  be  appropriate  and  dramatic  for  this  his 
tory  to  end  as  it  began  with  a  tavern-scene  and  drinking- 
chorus,  —  quintette  of  male  voices  and  one  soprano,— 
but  unfortunately  no  such  artistic  climax  is  possible. 
For  one  thing,  the  old  Saint  Simon  Hotel  went  out  of 
existence  the  other  day  —  Ichabod,  its  glory  is  departed  ! 
In  fact,  I  understand  that  most  of  the  Ichabods  have 
truly  departed ;  they  have  gone  over  to  the  Preston, 
or  to  some  of  the  other  magnificent,  new,  modern 
places  of  refreshment,  and  it  is  to  the  withdrawal  of 
this  Old  Testament  patronage  that  the  passing  of  the 
Saint  Simon  may  be  traced,  so  they  say.  At  any  rate, 
it  was  sold  up,  closed  up,  boarded  up,  a  year  or  so  ago ; 
and  will  presently  be  torn  down  to  make  room  for 
another  skyscraper,  no  doubt. 

And,  secondly,  as  to  the  principals  in  that  little  scene 
with  which  we  started  out,  we  have  lost  some  of  the 
voices  —  well,  well !  —  and  those  of  us  who  are  left, 
being  twenty  years  older,  are  not  always  in  the  best  of 
form  for  singing.  I  have  not  seen  Major  Van  Cleve 
since  I  don't  know  when ;  he  must  be  getting  on  in  years 
now,  although  still,  I  suppose,  a  boy  to  his  mother,  who 
is  eighty-seven,  as  her  grandson  tells  me,  but  remark 
ably  hale,  erect,  and  well  preserved. 

"Does  Mrs.  Lucas  continue  to  have  those  attacks 
of  the  heart  that  used  to  alarm  all  of  you  so  much  ?  " 
I  asked  him. 

Van  Cleve  considered  a  little.     "Why,  no,  I  don't 

390 


HIS   FRIENDS   AND   HIS   FAMILY  391 

believe  my  aunt  can  be  much  troubled  with  those  now 
adays  —  at  least  they  haven't  written  anything  about 
it  for  a  good  while.  Of  course  they  would  let  me  know 
if  anything  was  the  matter,"  he  said  at  last. 

They  certainly  would  ! 

"  The  climate  there  suits  her,  I  think,"  said  Van  Cleve. 
But  what  climate  he  meant,  or  where,  I  disliked  to  ask, 
he  so  evidently  took  it  for  granted  that  I  knew  all  about 
their  changes  of  residence  —  as  if  any  mortal  could  ! 

"I've  sometimes  thought  it  was  more  nerves  than 
heart  with  Aunt  Myra,  anyhow.  She  always  seems  to 
be  more  liable  to  —  to  get  upset  that  way  when  she's 
worried  or  disappointed  or  out  of  spirits,  you  know," 
he  added  with  a  simplicity  that  defeated  comment. 
And  just  then  a  salesman  came  up  to  say  that  the  ladies 
were  waiting  for  Mr.  Kendrick  up-stairs. 

For  where  do  you  suppose  this  conversation  took 
place  ?  It  was  at  Messrs.  Matthew  &  Luke's  some  time 
during  the  spring  of  1910,  the  date  being  fixed  in  my 
mind  by  the  fact  that  I  had  gone  into  the  shop  to  look 
at  summer  furnishings  for  the  porch.  There  I  happened 
upon  Van  Cleve,  roaming  restlessly  about  the  teak- 
wood  stands,  and  the  carved,  or  stained,  or  inlaid  "odd 
pieces,"  occasionally  stopping  to  turn  up  a  price-tag 
absent-mindedly,  or  backing  away  embarrassed  when 
he  came  face  to  face  with  himself  in  a  mirror.  The 
mere  sight  of  him  in  such  a  place  would  have  piqued 
one's  curiosity ;  but,  taken  with  the  intelligence  that 
the  ladies  were  waiting  for  him  up-stairs  (whereat  his 
countenance  lighted  up  visibly,  and  he  put  his  watch 
back  into  its  pocket  without  looking  at  it  again),  it 
was  a  guess-proof  mystery.  Nor  was  I  much  illumi 
nated  to  encounter  him  once  more,  half  an  hour  later, 
seriously  inspecting  a  panelled  oak  chest  in  company 
with  Mrs.  and  Miss  Gilbert. 

Their  backs  were  towards  me,  but  of  course  I  recog 
nized  them  at  once.  They  were  still  in  mourning  — 


392  VAN   CLEVE: 

Mrs.  Gilbert  will  never  take  off  that  black  veil  she  wears 
for  Bob,  —  but  Lorrie  had  a  white  wing  in  her  hat,  and 
her  face,  as  she  turned  with  some  earnest  speech  and 
gesture  to  Van  Cleve,  was  very  bright,  and  happily 
interested.  He  listened,  gravely  nodding ;  and  the  pic 
ture  they  made  was  so  startlingly  domestic  that  when 
at  length  they  observed  me  wavering  in  the  background, 
I  didn't  know  which  way  to  look  !  I  had  heard  of 
nothing  happening  recently  in  that  quarter;  but  if 
something  had  happened,  and  was  not  yet  announced  — 

However,  I  might  have  spared  my  benevolent 
excitement.  Mrs.  Gilbert  came  over  to  me  with  some 
thing  of  an  apprehensive  look  —  though  Lorrie  and  Van 
themselves  were  quite  cool  and  unruffled  —  and  began 
to  explain  rather  nervously  and  volubly.  She  and  her 
daughter  were  helping  Mr.  Kendrick  select  the  furniture 
for  his  new  apartment.  Yes,  didn't  I  know  about  it  ? 
It  was  so  nice.  He  was  going  to  have  one  of  those  new 
apartments  in  "The  Mantua";  he  was  tired  out  with 
boarding,  and  wanted  to  have  a  place  to  himself.  Oh, 
yes,  he  was  going  to  keep  house  regularly,  like  anybody 
else.  The  flat  would  be  lovely ;  Lorrie  wanted  him  to 
get  that  piece  they  were  just  looking  at  for  the  hall 
or  dining-room  — 

"Everybody  has  an  oak  chest  now,  you  know,  Van," 
Lorrie  put  in  eagerly;  "and  all  your  things  will  be  in 
that  solid,  plain  Old-English  style." 

"It  does  look  good  and  solid,"  said  Van  Cleve; 
"what's  it  for  ?"  At  which  inquiry,  both  ladies  looked 
pretty  well  gravelled  for  an  instant,  but  the  salesman 
unhesitatingly  stepped  into  the  breach. 

"Almost  anything  you  choose  —  they're  useful  in  a 
dozen  ways  —  no  limit  to  what  you  can  put  in  one  of 
them,  actually  !"  he  said  with  enthusiasm.  "That  old 
style  of  furniture,  as  your  wife  was  just  remarking,  was 
made  to  use.  That's  the  beauty  of  it,  you  know.  Why, 
I  sold  one  something  like  this  to  a  gentleman  out  here 


HIS  FRIENDS   AND  HIS  FAMILY  393 

in  the  suburbs  that  said  it  would  be  the  very  thing  for  his 
boys  to  keep  their  baseball  bats  and  uniforms  and  sweaters 
and  all  their  athletic  outfit  in  —  ha,  ha  !  But  now  for 
yourself,  why — -er — storage  —  furs,  household  linen— 

Van's  wife  !  But,  as  I  was  careful  not  to  catch  any 
body's  eye,  I  cannot  say  how  this  mistaken  reference 
was  received. 

' '  Oh,  blankets  and  things  ?  It  would  be  pretty  nice 
for  those,  wouldn't  it?"  said  Van  Cleve;  "all  right, 
Lorrie,  I'll  take  it,  if  you  say  so." 

"It  will  go  beautifully  with  the  rest  of  your  things," 
Lorrie  said,  her  eyes  dwelling  on  the  chest  delightedly. 
Then  businesslike  anxiety  settled  upon  her  brow. 
"  Oughtn't  we  to  go  and  look  at  the  Oriental  rugs  while 
we're  here?"  she  asked  Van  Cleve,  tensely. 

i  i  Who's  going  to  attend  to  the  '  blankets  and  things '  for 
him,  by  the  way?"  I  inquired  of  Mrs.  Gilbert,  as  we 
followed  them  in  the  direction  of  the  rug  department. 
"Men  don't  know  anything  about  that  part  of  house 
keeping." 

"Oh,  Lorrie  and  I  will  see  to  all  that.  She'll  tell 
him,"  said  Mrs.  Gilbert,  energetically;  "he'll  do  any 
thing  Lorrie  says  —  I  mean  -  ''  she  reddened  a  trifle, 
and  amended  hastily:  "I  mean  he  has  confidence  in 
her  judgment,  and  he  knows  that  she  won't  have  any 
foolish,  extravagant  ideas.  In  fact,  he's  the  one  that 
wants  to  spend  the  money,  and  has  to  be  held  back  all 
the  time.  Whenever  Lorrie  looks  twice  at  a  thing,  he 
thinks  she  wants  it  —  for  him,  I  mean,  you  know,  of 
course  —  and  she  can  hardly  keep  him  from  buying  it ! 
She  wants  him  to  —  that  is,  he  wants  her  to  —  that  is 

"  and  here  poor  Mrs.  Gilbert  came  so  perilously  near 
losing  her  balance,  conversationally,  that  I  charitably 
interrupted  to  right  her,  by  asking  if  Van  had  hired  any 
servants  yet,  or  did  he  mean  to  ? 

"Yes,  he's  got  a  Japanese.  They  say  they're  ideal, 
but  you  never  know  - 


394  VAN   CLEVE: 

"Well,  at  any  rate,  the  silver  and  brass  will  all  be 
kept  polished/7  said  Lorrie,  catching  the  drift  of  our 
talk.  "Men  always  do  that  if  they  don't  do  anything 
else."  And,  the  rugs  having  probably  brought  a  kindred 
subject  to  her  mind,  she  added  to  me  over  her  shoulder  : 
"volunteers  are  needed  for  the  curtain  and  cushion 
service,"  and  laughed  her  old  kind,  sweet  laugh. 

"Curtains  and  cushions!"  said  I,  agog.  And  I 
daresay  I  stared  very  hard  at  Van  Cleve,  who  neither 
saw  nor  heard  me.  He  himself  had  his  eyes  fixed  on 
the  back  of  Lome's  head  where  her  thick  hair  showed 
under  her  hat,  richly  brown,  except  where  the  light 
from  a  near-by  window  burnished  it. 

"I  never  heard  of  a  man  that  cared  to  have  curtains 
and  cushions  around,"  said  I,  flat;  "but  I'd  like  to 
help  with  them,  if  - 

"No,  no,  I  was  just  in  fun.  I'd  rather  make  them  all 
myself  —  really  I  would.  I  don't  need  any  help," 
Lorrie  quickly  assured  me.  She  seated  herself  on  a 
pile  of  rugs,  and  promptly  forgot  everything  else. 
"There,  that  copper-color  and  deep  blue  one,  that 
would  be  beautiful  in  the  living-room,  Van." 

"All  right.  Put  that  one  aside,"  he  ordered  the  clerk, 
briskly.  "Have  'em  put  aside  whatever  you  like, 
Lorrie.  I  don't  know  a  thing  about  colors  and  —  and 
all  that.  Pick  out  what  you  like." 

A  few  days  afterwards  when  I  went  over  to  the  Gil 
berts,  I  found  Lorrie  up  to  her  knees  in  fine  white  swiss 
and  scrim  draperies,  measuring,  cutting,  and  tearing 
with  the  hand  and  eye  of  an  expert.  Cretonnes,  charm 
ingly  patterned  with  cockatoos,  baskets  of  roses,  or 
drooping  garlands  of  fruits  lay  all  about  her  little  bed 
room  ;  there  were  down  pillows,  there  were  squares  of 
Chinese  embroidery,  there  were  yards  upon  yards  of 
white  cotton  fringes. 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  he  have  his  things  pretty?" 
she  retorted  almost  sharply  to  my  satirical  comments. 


HIS  FRIENDS  AND  HIS   FAMILY  395 

"Men  really  like  pretty  things  as  much  as  women  do. 
I'm  determined  to  make  Van  Cleve  comfortable  for 
once  in  his  life,  anyhow.  Nobody's  ever  cared  whether 
he  was  comfortable  or  not,  or  done  a  thing  for  him,  or  — 
or  had  things  look  nice  for  him,  in  his  whole  life  !"  said 
Lorrie  most  unjustly ;  but  she  tore  off  another  breadth 
with  a  fierce  little  snap  that  I  realized  finished  the  argu 
ment.  And,  although  she  plainly  had  her  hands-  full 
with  the  work,  she  could  scarcely  be  persuaded  to  let 
me  share  it,  and  parted  with  some  of  the  stuff  with  a 
reluctance  almost  jealous  ! 

Any  one  might  think  that  I  had  "put  my  foot  in  it," 
as  the  saying  goes,  often  enough  already ;  but  there  was 
one  more  experience  reserved  for  me,  one  more  moment 
of  supreme  awkwardness  about  which,  however,  no 
body  save  myself  and  one  other  lady,  my  friend  Mrs. 
Michael  Flannery,  who  goes  out  charwomaning  at 
a  dollar-thirty-five  a  day,  has  known  up  to  the  present 
hour.  It  occurred  when  I  had  got  my  quota  of  curtains 
for  Mr.  Kendrick's  rooms  finished,  and  carried  them  in 
a  tidy  parcel  over  to  "The  Mantua"  according  to 
Lome's  directions,  a  certain  Wednesday  afternoon 
which  she  had  named  as  the  day  of  installation.  By 
that  time,  the  last  of  the  cleaning,  papering,  and  so  on 
(all  of  which  she  seemed  to  have  under  her  personal 
charge)  would  be  done,  she  said,  and  Van's  "things" 
could  be  put  in  place.  In  fact,  when  I  reached  there, 
this  work  appeared  to  be  completed;  going  into  the 
Mantuan  corridors,  I  found  Van's  front  door  open  - 
he  had  one  of  the  roomiest  and  most  sumptuous  suites 
in  the  building  !  —  and  the  first  thing  I  saw  in  his  hall 
was  the  oak  chest,  looking  as  roomy  and  sumptuous 
as  its  surroundings ;  it  had  got  there  ahead  of  me  along 
with  the  rugs,  some  of  which  were  spread  down,  and  there 
was  even  a  picture  or  two  hung.  But  the  place  was 
surprisingly  quiet;  the  janitor  went  along  the  outside 
hall  with  a  step-ladder,  and  I  heard  a  scrub-woman  sluic- 


396  VAN  CLEVE: 

ing  a  pail  of  water  down  Mr.  Kendrick's  kitchen  sink, 
but  that  was  all.  Yet  Lorrie  had  said  that  she  and 
Van  would  both  be  there.  I  went  in,  stepping  with  an 
involuntary  caution ;  but  I  got  no  farther  than  the  liv 
ing-room  door,  which,  mercifully  for  me,  was  not  wide 
open. 

Perhaps  they  would  not  have  been  aware  of  me  in 
any  case.  They  were  standing  together  in  the  middle 
of  the  room,  and  the  girl  had  her  two  hands  to  her  face, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  that  Van  Cleve's  arms  were  where 
they  ought  to  be,  and  performing  the  best  of  offices. 
Retreating,  I  came  eye  to  eye  with  the  scrub-woman ; 
we  exchanged  not  a  word,  nor  even  a  grin,  but  went  on 
about  our  business  with  as  little  noise  as  possible. 
What  evinced  our  perfect  understanding  and  community 
of  interest  was  the  motion  we  both  made,  sponte  propria, 
to  draw  the  door  a  little  nearer  shut  when  we  heard 
the  janitor  coming  back;  we  were  not  going  to  have 
him  gawking  in  on  that  scene,  anyhow  ! 

I  have  wondered  since  how  it  happened,  what  Van 
said,  what  she  herself  said  and  thought.  The  effort 
at  home-making  must  have  been  too  much  for  her  reso 
lution,  her  pride,  her  distrust  of  herself.  She  was 
crying  a  little,  I  think.  Did  she  regret  the  lost  years  ? 
Was  she  sorry  for  Van  Cleve,  for  herself,  in  their  happi 
ness  that  need  not  have  come  so  late?  How  should 
we  know  ?  At  any  rate,  she  does  not  look  as  if  she  had 
had  occasion  to  shed  many  tears  since ;  we  have  seldom 
beheld  a  more  satisfied  couple.  And  I  feel  sure  that 
for  all  his  reputed  hardness  and  closeness,  Van's  greatest 
pleasure  in  life  is  in  being  able  to  give  his  wife  every 
thing  she  wants. 


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London's  unforgetable  big  men.  The  romance  which  develops  out 
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